


Hail Mary

by galaxysoup



Series: Hail Mary-verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, BAMF Castiel, BAMF Mary Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, POV Mary Winchester, Post-Episode: s09e03 I'm No Angel, Sick Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-30 21:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 191,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take one newly human ex-angel on the run from Heaven. Combine with one mysteriously resurrected and increasingly pissed off Mary Winchester. Add overtones of Apocalypse. Shake well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started writing this story with John as the resurrected one, and I was bored of him by the first 1500 words. And then I thought: you know who really deserves a chance to come back and be awesome? Mary. Oh my God, _Mary_. And then a chorus of non-dick angels descended from Heaven singing hallelujahs, which seemed like a clear sign that I should proceed.
> 
> I’ve never posted a WIP before, so I have no idea how this is going to go. Ideally it’ll function as a sort of alt-Season-9, with updates coming as things happen in the show and get translated into whatever-the-hell-verse this is, but really anything is possible. Depending on the way the show goes this season, it might just be one long coping mechanism. I’ll add tags and warnings as they become appropriate.
> 
> SPOILERS: Chances are high that I’m going to spoil the heaven out of Season 9.  
> WARNINGS: I’m planning to play as fast and loose with Christianity as the show does.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

**Hail Mary**  
 _1._ a prayer for intercession, also known as the Angelic Salutation  
 _2._ a desperate, last-ditch attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary regains consciousness in a rush, going from nothing to hyperaware so fast it makes her dizzy. Instinct and training tell her to lie still and play dead but adrenaline forces her eyes open.

She’s lying on her back on a cold floor, head turned towards the wall of what she’s going to guess is a warehouse of some kind. Behind her she can hear angry voices all yelling at once. It’s impossible to tell what they’re saying, although none of them seem to be directed at her.

The floor around her is painted with sigils in what she’s pretty sure is blood. She’s going to go ahead and assume that’s a bad sign.

Moving as slowly as possible, she turns her head and comes face-to-face with a corpse. It’s a guy in a suit with a silver spike sticking out of his chest. Mary breathes through her surprise, careful not to make a noise, and focuses on the room beyond. There’s a group of people in nice suits clustered around the far wall. At least one of them is kicking someone on the ground, but there’s too much of a commotion for her to be able to figure out who they are or what their beef is with the punching bag.

She sits up, keeping a wary eye on the Suits. The only obvious weapon nearby is the spike in the corpse’s chest, but silver stakes are too expensive and too hard to come by to waste on something that doesn’t absolutely require them. As much as she really wants to be armed right now, grabbing the stake might resurrect something she isn’t prepared to deal with. 

“She has arisen!”

The Suits turn from the body on the ground and start towards her. The leader is smiling joyfully, but Mary scrambles to her feet and takes a few steps back. She has no idea what’s happening or who was responsible for bringing her here in her - God, in her _nightie_ \- but she’s damn well going to mistrust everyone until she figures it out.

The Suits stop. The leader holds out one hand.

“Please, do not be frightened -”

There’s a scream of rage from one of the Suits in the back and a blinding flash of light, and when Mary’s vision clears all the Suits are gone except for the dead one next to her on the ground.

The figure by the wall groans and rolls onto his back. Mary makes her way over, the floor cold and gritty under her bare feet, keeping her back to the wall and a wary eye on the room’s perimeter. That sure looked like a banishment, which means that the Suits were creatures of some kind. There’s no telling how far they were sent or if there are any more.

On her way she passes a second silver stake lying abandoned on the floor and picks it up. It’s actually more of a long dagger or short sword, bladed but without a cross-guard. It’s well-balanced and feels unsettlingly warm in her hand.

The person on the floor turns out to be a man, dark-haired and scruffy and pretty badly beaten. He blinks woozily up at Mary.

“Mary Winchester?” He sounds surprised. His voice is unexpectedly deep and gravelly - he probably got hit in the throat at some point. A hacking cough and another groan bears that theory out.

“You know my name?” Mary asks, halting just out of reach. She doesn’t think the guy’s in any shape to attack, but there’s no telling for sure.

The man doesn’t answer, rolling onto his side so he can look at the room. “We need to go,” he says. “I don’t know what banishing them does any more. I hope I didn’t kill anyone.” He tries to push himself upright and collapses.

“How do you know who I am?” Mary repeats.

The man rests his forehead on the ground, panting. “Dean.”

Mary edges closer. “Dean? My son, Dean?” Dean’s just a child. There’s no reason for this man to know him.

No. That isn’t right, is it? Dean’s an adult and so is Sam. She’s seen them all grown up, in Lawrence. Has she?

The man stirs sluggishly and mumbles something into the floor. “Hey,” Mary says. “Hey! How do you know Dean?”

There’s no answer. Mary crouches down and shakes him, but he doesn’t even groan.

She sits back on her heels. She remembers… being at home in Lawrence. She remembers walking into Sammy’s nursery and finding the demon standing over his crib. And then she’d… oh God, she’d died? But... not? She definitely remembers Dean and Sammy alive and well and looking out for each other as adults, but she’s not sure _why_ and she’s not sure what happened in between.

She shakes herself free of her thoughts and stands. There will be time to figure out the details later. As Mom always said, survival comes first. 

The warehouse doesn’t give her any clues - there’s no notebook or grimoire to give her any information about the markings on the floor, and it isn’t anything she’s ever seen before. The dead Suit doesn’t have anything in his pockets and his clothing’s generic enough to be useless.

Outside she finds a pickup truck and a battered sedan, both with Nebraska plates and the keys in the ignition. Other than that there’s nothing - no nearby buildings, no signs, only fields and a dirt road. She digs through the glove compartments of the vehicles and comes up with two owner’s manuals, a stack of paper napkins, a toy car and a few of those salt packets you can get from fast-food places. It’s something, at least.

Rip Van Winkle doesn’t react to the salt or to a cut from the silver spike. A quick examination shows no sign of fangs or spikes or claws hidden anywhere, although he’s got some pretty impressive bruising starting up. He’s also running a slight fever and his lungs sound congested. In Mary’s experience chest colds are a pretty human trait.

His pockets yield nothing but a few crumpled small bills and a neatly folded flyer for a homeless shelter in Kearney, which probably explains the too many layers of clothing and the unwashed smell. It doesn’t explain how he knows Dean. It also doesn’t explain the bloody sigil on the wall that he must have used to banish the Suits. 

Well. Whoever he is and whatever his connection is to her son, he’s the only lead Mary’s got, and he’s right about one thing: they should get the hell out of here. Mary’s got no idea who the Suits were or what they were trying to accomplish, but she’s inclined to be very suspicious about it. Stealing one of their cars and getting the hell out of Dodge seems like a good idea.

Of the two of them it’s more important that she’s able to move fast, so she pulls off Rip Van Winkle’s boots and puts them on. They’re too big, but it’s better than nothing. She hauls him up into a fireman’s carry and lugs him out to the car. He’s thin for his height, but he’s still really damn heavy. He regains consciousness when she dumps him in the passenger seat of the truck a little harder than she would have liked. More or less, anyway - his eyes open, but he seems to have trouble focusing on Mary’s face.

“Hey!” Mary taps the man’s cheek. “Got a name?”

He mumbles something that sounds like ‘Castle’ and passes out again. Mary sighs and belts him in. She really doesn’t understand the weird names people give their kids sometimes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She ditches the truck and steals a replacement in the first town they come to, swapping the plates out with another car from across the lot. Castle wakes up enough to get in the way when she moves them to the second vehicle. When Mary tries to question him he grabs her shoulder, peers intently into her eyes from a distance of only a few inches, and says “The angels are angry. That’s good.” And then he stares at the sky and passes out again.

“Your friend is a real pain in the butt, Dean,” Mary says to the air. She gets into the passenger seat and then stares in perplexity at the space-age dashboard in front of her. The car hadn’t looked that fancy from the outside or she wouldn’t have chosen it.

Well. Nothing for it now. Every moment they spend in the parking lot brings them closer to getting busted, and lugging an unconscious man from one car to the other was already enough of a risk. She gets the car started and pulls out.

As soon as they’re out of town, she pulls over and opens the glove box. The owner’s manual is buried under a pile of electrical equipment and a box of condoms. It says ‘2011 Civic Sedan’ on the cover.

The world seems to swoop and distort around her.

“Castle. _Castle_.” She shakes him until he opens his eyes. “What’s the date?”

“I can’t tell time any more,” he says. He sounds surprised.

“ _How old is Dean?”_

Castle frowns. “Time passes differently in Purgatory and Hell.”

Okay. Okay. Mary rests her forehead on the steering wheel and concentrates on breathing. hyperventilating isn’t going to help. Neither will crying.

“You’re upset,” Castle says cautiously.

“I really, really need you to tell me what year it is right now,” Mary says as steadily as possible.

“I think it should still be 2013,” Castle says.

Mary remains calm. The one rule her mother was always the most adamant about was that survival comes first and everything else can be pushed to second place. Jumping thirty years into the future can wait. Survival comes first. 

God. _God_. Dean must be thirty-four now. Sammy’s got to be thirty. Her children are older than she is.

She very calmly gets out of the car, throws up, and gets back in again.

“I don’t know how to make you stop being upset,” Castle says worriedly.

“Did I die?” Mary asks thickly. “I remember dying. I died, didn’t I?”

“I wasn’t there,” Castle says in a hushed, frightened voice.

Stay calm. Survival first. Mary takes a deep breath. “Go back to sleep.” She needs information but mostly she needs to hold it together and she cannot, cannot hold it together if she has another shock. Driving is going to be hard enough already. She starts the car.

They need shelter and they need supplies, so they stop outside the next town big enough to have a pharmacy. Mary finds a grassed-over driveway in the farmland to the north and follows it to a half-burnt house with a pile of charred lumber where a barn might have been. The interior smells damp and smoky but it’s structurally sound, so she deposits Castle on the couch and does an inventory. Most of the stuff’s been left behind; either the owners of the house died in the fire or the insurance paid enough for them to restart from scratch. Mary’s betting on the first scenario.

There’s a little bit of canned food in the kitchen and there is one undamaged bedroom left with clothing in the closet. Mary changes into a loose flannel shirt and a pair of jeans she has to belt with twine. They’re musty but at least they’re better than a nightie. At least they have _pockets_. 

She goes back to the couch and shakes Castle until he wakes up. “I’m going to get some supplies. Stay here until I get back. Do you understand me?”

Castle pulls himself upright, coughing and looking around blearily. One of his eyes has swelled shut - Mary adds ‘ice pack’ to her mental list of supplies. “I need a marker. Something permanent. Tattoo equipment would be ideal.”

Mary’s not sure if that’s more or less coherent than he was in the car, but it seems like a harmless enough request. “I’ll see if I can find something.” She eyes him - he’s flushed and unsteady and she’s not sure how much of a help he’ll be. She’s not sure how much of a help _she’ll_ be if she has a nervous breakdown, but she can’t get the memory of Sammy in his crib with the demon standing over him out of her head. 

No. Survival first. She can only fix what’s right in front of her and she won’t be able to help anyone if she doesn’t stay focused and do what she needs to do. She remembers seeing Sammy grown (does she?) so he’s fine. She must have interrupted the demon in time.

Right?

“Have you - have you met my other son, too?”

Castle nods and winces. “Sam. He’s grown out his hair.” He frowns in confusion at the room.

Mary swallows hard. “But he’s all right? They both are?”

That gets his attention. He zeroes in on her with slightly unnerving intensity. “They were well when I last saw them, Mary. Their home is protected. Do not fear.”

She breathes shakily, the strong urge to have hysterics receding a little. “Good. That’s good. Is John with them?”

Castle’s not listening any more, though. He’s staring fixedly at the ceiling now. Mary waves a hand in front of his face but he doesn’t even blink until she digs through the kitchen and finds a marker for him. “This okay?”

Castle refocuses. “Yes,” he says, and reaches for the hem of her shirt.

“Whoa! What are you doing?”

Castle frowns at her. “If I don’t ward you the angels will be able to find you.”

“The angels.” Mary repeats slowly. Some hunters do like to give creatures nicknames, but it seems obscene to name the things in the warehouse after something so pure. 

Of course, it’s also possible that Castle’s on the streets because he’s crazy. He wouldn’t be the first hunter to jump off the sanity high-dive. “You mean the Suits?”

“Their apparel is not mandatory.” 

Well. Castle might be crazy, but his banishing sigil had certainly worked, and it’s just marker. Mary can wash it off if she needs to. “You can put it on my arm.” She rolls up her sleeve.

Castle frowns but bends his attention to his task. Drawing the sigils seems to help him focus, although he has a tendency to mumble under his breath while he does it. Mary watches him until she’s sure he’s absorbed in his work, and then she says “Hey, Cas, when did you meet my boys?”

As she’d hoped, the nickname has an effect. Castle smiles a little, still intent on his task. “I gripped Dean tight and raised him from Perdition.” He pauses long enough to give Mary an earnest look. “Your son has an exceptional soul.”

“Uh, thanks,” Mary says. She has no idea what he means, but given how loopy he is it’s probably metaphorical somehow. Maybe he had to rescue Dean from something? Or set him free?

Castle coughs and turns back to his work. “I did not meet Sam until the raising of Samhain but he is exceptional as well. I apologize for the extent of the markings. A tattoo or a branding could accomplish the same protection with fewer symbols, but I have to compensate for the inherently transient nature of the marker.”

“That’s all right,” Mary says. The way he flips from crazy to competent and back again is a little dizzying. “Cas, what can you tell me about what happened in the warehouse?”

“I also need to concentrate,” Castle says pointedly.

“Right.” Mary shuts up. Hopefully Castle will be easier to question once his fever’s down.

Castle coughs more and gets steadily paler as he works, and by the time he announces he’s done he’s sweaty and shaking. He stares at his trembling hands with something like betrayal. “My body doesn’t do what I ask of it.”

“Most don’t,” Mary says, heroically not pointing out that for a grown man Castle sounds a lot like her chi- like a child when he complains about stuff like that. She checks him over to make sure none of the bruising on his torso is hiding an internal injury, but it looks like it’s just the fever spiking. 

She’s not wild about leaving the guy here on his own, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a choice. She digs through his pockets until she’s sure she’s got all his money (who the hell decided to redesign the currency? It looks completely fake) and then she covers him with one of the blankets from the bedroom. He opens his eyes long enough to mumble something about bees and then settles down.

Mary does not think about tucking Dean in and she does not think about putting Sammy down in his crib. She does not think about bedtime stories or Sammy’s soft baby hair or singing ‘Hey Jude’. She does not think about who they might be now and what might have happened to them and how she wouldn’t even recognize them if she -

She doesn’t. She doesn’t think about it. As she leaves the house she takes a moment to close her eyes and breathe, and then she gets in the space-age car with the stupid Monopoly money and goes to find supplies.

Survival first.

Everything else later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the emphasis in the show has always been on Samuel Campbell rather than Deanna, but my own personal headcanon is that Deanna was the one Mary was closest to. We don’t get to see too much of Deanna in the flashback episodes, but when Mary had her first son she chose to alter her mother’s name instead of using her father’s already gender-appropriate one. I know the writers probably just did that because it would be funny when Dean found out, but I think it’s more interesting this way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: None  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Inflation rates

By the time Mary gets back to the house it’s after dark and hours past when she’d intended to return. Her initial plan had been to hit the pharmacy and the grocery store and save everything else for later, but it turns out that fourteen dollars doesn’t stretch anywhere near as far in 2013 as it did in 1983. She’d had to find a bar to hustle pool in, and to hustle pool she’d needed a thrift store for clothing that hadn’t obviously been stolen from someone bigger, older, and deader.

The cons came back like breathing. Mary’s been out of the hunting game for a while, but she was raised in it and as much as she had hated it sometimes, it still feels natural. It’s also weirdly reassuring that even after thirty years of evolution a drunk can still be swindled by a woman who’s willing to show some cleavage and pretend to be brainless.

Navigating the future, on the other hand, is a lot harder. Names for things have changed. Slang is practically a different language - instead of asking for her number, the guy she sweet-talked at the bar asked if she was on _Facebook_ , whatever the hell that means. There was such a bewildering array of choices at the pharmacy that she gave up completely and just listed off Castle’s symptoms for the pharmacist.

She’d done it, though. She’d gotten everything she needed and she’d returned successfully. Now she’s clothed, fed, and has supplies, which is a far cry from being the woman in a nightie and someone else’s boots this morning. Maybe once he’s better Castle will know how to contact John or Dean or Sammy, and even if he doesn’t, there are others that she can probably track down. 

She can do this. She can figure this out.

She carries her purchases into the house and stops dead in the door to the living room.

“What on Earth -”

The walls, floor, and ceiling are covered in sigils. Castle’s standing by the door to the kitchen, swaying precariously as he scrawls another symbol with - is that lipstick? He must have run out of marker.

Mary sets her things down and steps cautiously into the room. How the hell did he even draw on the ceiling? _Jesus_. “Cas?”

He turns to look at her and nearly overbalances. His eyes are glittering with fever and his color’s high.

“Mother of All,” he says grimly, and then shakes his head. “No. No. My mistake. It’s very frustrating not being able to see someone’s true face. How do you stand the uncertainty?”

“Okay, Castle,” Mary says as soothingly as she can. “Let’s sit down on the couch, how does that sound?”

“Castle?” He frowns but follows her, collapsing with a grunt. “What’s the word, it’s a shortened version of my name.” He presses his hands to his temples. “My thoughts are not linear. This is very similar to the last time I was insane.”

“Been crazy before, huh?” Mary says dryly, feeling his forehead. Oh yeah. That’s a temperature, all right.

“When I removed Sam’s pain. There are fewer insects this time. It’s a disappointment. Bees are amazing philosophers.”

“I bet,” Mary says, digging through the pharmacy bags. “Now, I want you to eat this and then swallow these, okay?”

He’s an obedient crazy person, at least. He dutifully crunches his way through the granola bar and takes his medicine with a bottle of ginger ale, giving her a half-coherent lecture on the metaphysics of insect communication in between bites. Mary spends most of her time making noncommittal ‘listening’ noises and eyeing the crazy on the walls around her. She really hopes that it’s warding and not something dangerous.

The exhaustion hits just before Castle finishes off his drink. Mary watches in amusement as he slumps against the couch, speech starting to slur a bit.

“Lie down and get some sleep,” she tells him, moving to make room for his legs. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

“No, Mary.”

“I’ll be right in that room over there if you wake up during the night.”

“Yes, Mary.”

“All right. Sleep well.” She pulls the blanket up around his shoulders and kisses him on the forehead.

Castle smiles and closes his eyes, apparently oblivious to the way every part of her has just turned to stone. She presses her fingers against her mouth. The gesture had been so automatic, so instinctive. She hadn’t been thinking, lulled into complacency by Castle’s rambling monologue and the familiar rhythm of getting someone ready for bed.

She pushes herself away from the couch and goes into the bathroom. The water still works - it’s probably hooked up to a well instead of a municipal supply. 

She turns on the shower and the sink at full blast to provide white noise, sits down with her back against the door, and cries.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, lying on the floor of the bathroom with the water still running. She gets up stiffly, her head pounding, and turns everything off. Castle’s sleeping quietly in the living room so she goes to the bedroom and curls up on the bed.

The house creaks in the night, settling the way old houses do. The wind whispers strangely through the ruined parts of it. After a few moments of wakefulness, it occurs to Mary that it really isn’t sensible for her to sleep alone in the unwarded bedroom, so she drags all the bedding to the living room and piles it on the floor next to the couch. Castle’s deep, even breaths don’t hitch once.

She wakes the next morning feeling achy and muzzy-headed. The couch is empty and Castle’s blanket has been carefully tucked around her.

She finds him on the back steps, quietly watching the sunrise. He’s lit a fire in the abandoned barbecue grill and has a kettle balanced precariously on top.

“Good morning, Castle.”

He twists to look up at her. “It’s ‘Castiel’, actually. Dean and Sam typically shorten it to ‘Cas’. Would you like some coffee?”

And she’d thought ‘Castle’ was weird. “Cas it is.” She watches as he pulls the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his hand and rescues the kettle from the fire, pouring its contents into a chipped green mug.

“Wait for a moment and let the grounds settle. It’s unpleasant otherwise. A homeless man taught me that.”

She nods and cups the mug between her hands. The morning isn’t too cold, but she feels shivery inside. “You seem to be feeling better.” He’s still moving stiffly, but the swelling in his face is down and his eyes are clear. When she feels his forehead she finds that his fever is nearly gone, although his voice is still rough and he keeps coughing.

He nods and turns his attention to his own mug. “Much better. Thank you for your kindness.”

They sit for a moment in silence. Mary knows she needs to ask about the warehouse and everything that’s happened, but it seems harmless enough to take this moment of quiet for herself.

Survival means information, now that they’ve gotten past their immediate physical needs. She sighs. Dammit.

“Cas, do you know how I got here? To the warehouse, I mean?”

He cocks his head, considering. “The resurrection spell the angels cast was very powerful and not one that any angel would undertake lightly. It requires an angelic blood sacrifice, among other things. I don’t know why they chose you, though. I’m sorry. I heard they were excited about something and so I decided to investigate.”

Mary rubs her forehead. “What _are_ the angels, exactly?”

He frowns. “The angels are angels.” When her expression remains skeptical he gestures at the sky. “Of the Lord.”

“Get the hell out of here.” It pops out without her permission.

Cas smiles. “That’s exactly what Dean said when I introduced myself.”

“Introduced yourself as… what, exactly?” Mary asks cautiously. 

“As an angel.” His smile fades. “Although I’m afraid that I’m not what I once was.”

Mary puts down her mug. Gritty coffee is not strong enough to help her make sense of this conversation. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”

“Very well. In the beginning was the Word -”

“Ah!” Mary cuts him off. “Give me bullet points? Just the relevant parts?”

Cas sits silently for a moment, considering, and then nods decisively. “God has been absent from Heaven since shortly after Lucifer’s Fall. In His absence, Heaven became corrupt and the archangels discontent. Some left, and some set a plan into motion to bring about the Apocalypse. To that end, you and John Winchester were brought together by the Cupids for the purpose of producing two sons: an older one, obedient to his father, to host the archangel Michael, and a rebellious younger one to host Lucifer. Simultaneously, the demon Azazel orchestrated your deal with him which allowed him to begin preparing Sam for his role by feeding him demon blood as an infant -” he stops, taking in Mary’s horrified expression. “Do you wish me to stop?”

“No,” Mary croaks. “No. Keep going.”

“A - a long series of events followed that,” Cas says, slowly. “The, upshot? The _upshot_ of those events is that John died to save Dean, Dean died to save Sam, I rescued his soul from Hell, Sam died to save the world, I rescued _him_ from Hell but in an unfortunate oversight left behind his - well, it’s no longer strictly important, but although we did not manage to stop the Apocalypse Sam and Dean did prevent the Final Battle that would have ushered in The End and - and after a series of poor decisions and a brief period of being evil and then insane I trusted the wrong angel which resulted in my current humanity and the expulsion of every angel from Heaven.”

Mary stares at him. He winces and soldiers on.

“The angels now on Earth have a number of agendas, depending on the faction, and most of them would be disastrous for mankind. Dean and Sam and I are doing what we can to protect the innocent. Please tell me how you would like me to respond if you must cry,” he finishes uncertainly.

“Most of that was metaphorical, right?” she asks. She believes in angels, sure, but she doesn’t _believe_. Angels are, are a representation of the good in humanity, they aren’t actual entities, it’s absurd. Cas is crazy, she knew this. He even said so himself.

“No, it is fact.” Cas looks very certain for a crazy person. He’s doing his laser stare thing again, too.

“But you’re crazy, right?” Mary asks, voice rising. It’s a stupid question and she knows it.

“Not currently,” Cas says, “Although I concede that 94% of psychotics do think they’re perfectly sane. But no, everything I have told you was true and unadorned, although abbreviated.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Mary whispers.

She isn’t, but it’s a close thing. She rests her head on her knees and blocks out Cas’s worried voice, focusing just on breathing until the wave of nausea recedes a little. She didn’t understand most of what Cas said, and she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to. She clenches her hands in her hair.

“If you will tell me how to comfort you -”

“So, they’re hunters?” Mary interrupts, her voice muffled against her legs. She’s pretty sure she interpreted that part of the story correctly, although she really, really hopes she didn’t. “My boys, they’re hunters?”

“Yes,” Cas says, relieved by her response. “They have saved many people and taught me much about humanity.”

She bites her lip, struggling to keep her voice from wavering. “And John’s dead?”

Cas is silent for a long moment. “Yes. He’s dead,” he says quietly.

Mary’s entire body clenches in misery. “Would you leave me alone right now, please?” she whispers.

“Of course,” Cas says. “If you wish it, yes. I will be inside.” He hesitates for a moment, just long enough that Mary thinks he’s going to stay anyway, and then he presses a kiss to the top of her head and vanishes back into the house.

Mary keeps her head down until her breathing is more or less under control. She doesn’t cry. When she finally raises her eyes the morning seems harsh and bright. Her coffee is cold and the fire in the grill has died down to embers.

She had tried so hard to keep her boys from hunting. She’d lied to John, she’d made a deal with a demon, she’d been ready to run from her parents. When Dean had been scared of the monster in his closet she’d told him that there was nothing to be frightened of and when she’d decorated Sammy’s nursery she’d put angels over his crib. 

She’d meant that to be symbolic, a comfort. If Cas can be believed, it’s just horribly ironic.

What must her boys have thought when they realised what she’d done? They must hate her. She’d brought all that suffering down on them with her cowardice and her fantasy of a normal life. And John - God, John. What had he thought when he found out about her past? Or had his death been what pushed her boys into hunting? Cas had only said that he’d died to save Dean. Had the moment of his death been the first time he’d known of the evil things in the world?

Had he been scared?

She tries to imagine her boys hunting and she can’t do it. Sweet, sensitive Dean and happy, stubborn Sammy… what had they been forced to do to survive? Had it helped them to hate her? She’d been warned not to go into Sammy’s room on that horrible night. She’d been warned _twice_ , once by that strange drifter who came through before her parents died and once by the demon himself. 

If she’d survived that night, would she have been able to protect her children afterwards? Would she have given in and gone back to hunting, or would she have been able to give them the life she’d never had herself? 

She scrubs her hands over her face. Enough. She can’t change what’s been done and what-ifs will only drive her to insanity. She’ll just - carry on. With... whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing here in the future.

Well. When she and John were having problems, she’d channeled everything into taking care of Dean and Sammy. She can’t - she can’t think about why she can’t do that now, but she can go back in the house and unpack everything she got yesterday. She can make breakfast and make sure Cas takes his medicine and she’ll - she’ll - it’s probably silly to clean an abandoned half-burnt house, but she can tidy up at least. Fold the bedding.

Decision made, she stands and makes her way through the kitchen and into the living room, ready to put on a brave face, only to find that in her absence Cas has occupied himself by doing the same things she’d been planning on. The bedding is folded in a… very unusual way, granted, and when Cas had unpacked her shopping he’d done it by lining up every item neatly against the wall in no particular order, but she recognizes it as an attempt to help.

He’s standing nervously in the center of the room, a bundle of plastic bags clenched in one hand. When she walks in he puts his hand behind his back as if she’ll scold him for having them.

She hesitates for just an instant, thrown, and then puts on a smile and carries on. “Thanks for tidying up, Cas, that was really helpful of you. Would you like breakfast?”

Cas looks just as unnerved. “Yes,” he says carefully. “Are you still upset?”

She forces the smile to stay. “I am, but I’ll be okay. Would you like to help me in the kitchen?”

Breakfast is mostly a silent affair. Mary had tried to get food that wouldn’t need to be cooked or prepared in any way, so there’s not that much to be done. She makes sure Cas takes more cold medicine and drinks plenty of fluids, and then suggests he take a nap.

He blinks. “Do you want me to leave the kitchen?”

“Oh, no,” Mary reassures him. “I just thought you might be tired. You don’t need to take one unless you want to.” She considers him for a moment. “You know what? How about this: if you’re not tired we can go to the thrift store and find you some more clothes. Would you like that?”

“My clothing does get dirty now,” Cas says thoughtfully. “Yes. You are right. I should find more.”

“Alright. We have enough money for that.” She hesitates for a moment, and then plunges on. Whether he’s actually a fallen angel or just really eccentric, he does seem to be a little clueless. “I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything, but are you growing that beard on purpose?”

Cas blinks and rubs his chin. “It grows by itself.”

Right. “I’m sorry - I meant to ask if you wanted a beard or if you usually shave?”

Cas sighs. “I’m no longer able to keep it from growing. It itches,” he adds plaintively.

“Okay.” That’s a bit of a relief - the beard makes him look pretty scraggly. “Well, I’ve watched John - I mean, I’ve seen men shave before. I should be able to help you figure it out.”

They drag one of the kitchen chairs into the bathroom and sit Cas down in it. She shows him how to soap up his face and then demonstrates a reasonable attempt at shaving on one side.

“Okay, now you try to do the rest.”

They manage it pretty well - Cas cuts himself once and is so surprised he nearly drops the razor, but in the end he’s more or less clean-shaven. The house’s water heater probably hasn’t worked for years and Mary has some misgivings about Cas taking a cold shower while he’s still sick, but she makes him bundle up afterwards and it doesn’t seem to have any ill effects. Plus, he smells a lot better.

“All right,” Mary says. “I think we’re ready. Did you brush your teeth?”

Cas shakes his head and, to her bemusement, picks up the tube of toothpaste and squeezes some directly into his mouth. “I’d like to touch up the warding symbols on your arm as well before we go. What is it?”

“Cas,” Mary says slowly, “that’s not how you brush your teeth.”

Cas frowns. “It’s not?”

Okay. She’s still not sure she’s completely sold on Cas’s claim to be an ex-angel, but the idea of him being newly human becomes more plausible by the hour. His teeth are way too good for him to have been taking such poor care of them his entire life.

“Here. Watch how I do it.”

All in all it takes them quite a bit longer to get out the door than she’d thought it would, but it’s not like they were working on any kind of deadline.

They reach the thrift store shortly before noon. Mary shepherds Cas in through the door and over to the men’s section.

They stand there expectantly for a moment.

“So, anything look good?” Mary says finally.

Cas gives her a hunted look. “What criteria should I use?”

“Well,” Mary says slowly, “how did you choose what you’re wearing now?”

“It was in a box marked ‘free’.”

Fair enough - and in that case, he actually did pretty well. “What did you wear before that?” If he says ‘halo and a toga’ she is so done.

“A black suit and a blue tie with a tan overcoat,” Cas recites. “Before that I wore white hospital scrubs and a tan overcoat. Before that I wore clothing my wife chose for me and a tan overcoat. Before that -”

“You were married?” Mary asks, surprised.

Cas shrugs, embarrassed. “I lost my memory.”

Okay then. “Tell you what - why don’t we look through some of these clothes and see if there’s anything you like? We can just go one step at a time.” She smiles at him encouragingly. “Maybe we’ll even find another tan overcoat for you.”

“No.” Cas hunches his shoulders. “The overcoat had significance to Dean. It became a symbol. I can no longer provide - I’m no longer capable of -” He sighs, frustrated. “No. I don’t want an overcoat.”

“We’ll find you a different kind of coat, then.” The set of his shoulders is still tense and unhappy. She grabs something at random off a rack nearby. “Do you like this color?”

Cas begins to relax as they make their way through the selection, and to Mary’s surprise she starts to enjoy herself as well. Whatever else he was doing before she met him, Cas spent very little time paying any attention to clothing. Watching him discover colors and textures is like seeing her kids begin to explore -

No. She can’t think about that. She focuses on Cas.

Together, they discover that Cas prefers solid colors to patterns. He likes sturdy fabrics and soft ones. He likes the way corduroy feels when he touches it but not when he wears it. He likes shirts that fasten up the front more than he likes pullovers, although he takes an immediate shine to a t-shirt with a faded picture of a car on the front. It looks a little like the car John - 

It looks familiar.

They bundle up Cas’s new wardrobe and take it out to the car. Although she’ll need to find them some more funds soon, Mary judges that they have enough for lunch at the diner across the parking lot and she figures they deserve a bit of a treat. She could _murder_ a chocolate malt right now.

Cas halts as she walks past the car, confused. “We’re not returning to the house?”

Mary smiles. “I thought it would be nice to have lunch before we leave.”

Cas shifts uncomfortably. “I… should not.”

Mary studies him. He looks resigned. Defeated. It’s an abrupt switch from the tiny, pleased smiles he’d been letting slip in the store. “Can you explain why?”

He studies the ground. “You recall what I told you this morning, about my humanity?”

She shivers. She doesn’t really want to remember anything about this morning. “I didn’t understand most of it.”

He nods, shifting his focus to the horizon and then swiftly past her face to the trunk of the car without making eye contact. “The angels on Earth hold me responsible for their expulsion from Heaven and they have proven that they will go to extreme lengths to find me. I’m putting you in danger by being with you. It’s for the best if we - “ he swallows hard and forces the words out. “- If we part ways at this juncture.”

Mary nods slowly, taking this in. It does explain his mania for warding, and if he’s trying to minimize his contact with innocents it probably goes a good deal of the way towards explaining his homelessness as well. “We can get it to go instead.”

He frowns. “You misunderstand.”

“No, I don’t,” Mary says sharply, cutting him off. “Thank you for letting me know, and thank you for your concerns about my safety. Now please respect my choice.”

He gapes at her. At least he’s making eye contact now. “But -”

Mary sighs and leans against the car, suddenly exhausted beyond all measure. “Cas, look. I don’t know why I’m here and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t even know if I believe all this crazy angel stuff. What I do know is that this world is nearly unrecognizable to me, not just because of the year but because the rules are different. I don’t know what’s safe and what isn’t.” He’s back to staring at the ground, although he looks more worried than resigned now. 

He might be crazy, he might even be conning her, but the idea of finding her way through this mess without him is abruptly terrifying. She has a better idea than most just how dangerous the world can be, particularly if you only have a vague idea of what you’re doing. It’s only sensible to acquire some form of backup.

“Cas.” She waits until he forces himself to look at her. “Right now you’re the only friend I’ve got.”

His expression softens. It’s not pity - Mary would have bristled at that. It’s understanding. 

“It isn’t good to be alone,” he says quietly.

“No.” She rubs her forehead. “So, let’s get some lunch and we can go back to the house. We should wash your new clothes before you wear them.” And hers as well, if a little belatedly. And then they can…she can make them dinner, and then…

There are only so many chores she can do. Sooner or later she’s going to run out, and then there’ll be nothing to do but think. It doesn’t seem fair to saddle Dean and Sammy with the resurrected mother who screwed them over and has no idea how to function in this strange new world. She should find a job somewhere, maybe waitressing or something, and learn to - 

No.

You know what?

Screw practicality. Her children, her husband, and her life have all been taken from her, and she is _angry_.

“Hey, Cas,” she says. “After lunch, want to find something to kill?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry this chapter took so long! Last week RL took precedence (nothing bad, I was just very busy) and I had to put writing on a shelf for a bit. As an apology, this chapter contains SHENANIGANS!
> 
> CHAPTER WARNINGS: defamation of an historical figure, alteration of historical facts to suit the author’s whims, the magical version of pseudo-science  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: driving routes; the history of: TV remotes, computers, and women in law enforcement; dead people in an actual real-world cemetery (because reasons)

They don’t go off right after lunch and start hunting things, of course. Even if Mary was foolish enough to jump into a hunt without supplies or weapons, they still have to find one and research takes time. And even if it weren’t for _that_ , the way Cas puts his head down on the table and dozes off as soon as he’s done eating would have indicated that he wasn’t quite up for it yet.

Still, it’s nice to have a plan and a goal to work towards. While Cas naps, Mary reads through the newspapers she’d picked up in town and looks for interesting items. At first she’s worried that being in the future will make it hard for her to distinguish between bad-weird and normal-weird, and she certainly might be misjudging some of the things she reads, but even in the future a woman drowning to death while standing on the front steps of a historic mansion has got to be unusual.

Mary frowns and rereads the article. A historic mansion located in a cemetery? Bingo. It’s in Philadelphia, which is kind of a hike, but a haunting seems like a good job to start off with and it might be a smart idea for them to get out of Nebraska for a bit. They’ll need salt, accelerant, lighters…

By the time Cas wakes up, Mary has a plan of attack all worked out. She’ll need to spend the next day or so gathering their supplies - mostly because she’ll have to find a new town to hustle pool in, she’s starting to get a reputation - but that just means Cas can rest up a bit.

And if being busy helps her to focus and not think about… other things, well. That’s just a pleasant side effect.

“How much hunting have you done, Cas?” She asks.

Cas blinks at her blearily. His hair is sticking up like crazy. “I’ve helped Dean and Sam with some of their cases. They generally call for me when they need… big guns? Big guns.” His shoulders slump. “ _Called_ for me. I am much less effective now.”

Mary raises her eyebrows. “You seem pretty handy to me. As an angel, did you have, I dunno, a specialty?” Do angels have specialties, assuming they’re real? Saints do, she remembers, and possibly the archangels do as well - wasn’t Michael supposed to be a healer? Or was that Raphael? She can’t remember. Gabriel had a horn, she’s pretty sure, although she can’t remember what he was supposed to do with it. 

She certainly doesn’t know anything about the Angel Castiel.

The human Cas yawns hugely. “Mm. Yes. I was a soldier, a captain of my garrison.”

Mary nods. She can work with that. “If you were a captain, you must have been a strategist?”

Cas shakes his head. “A tactician. Do you know the difference?”

“Strategy is long-term, tactics are immediate?” Mary tries. Honestly, she’s never really thought about it before.

“Essentially,” Cas says. “Angels are eternal unless they are killed in battle. We naturally tend towards long-range plans that focus on a larger picture. Tacticians like myself were much rarer - that and my skill with traps and sigils was why I was given an Earthly duty when the First Seal was broken, despite my inexperience with humanity. My superiors thought my ability to plan quickly might provide an edge, since humans operate on a much faster timeline.”

“Did it?” Mary asks, fascinated despite herself.

Cas sighs. “It’s difficult to say how events would have changed if I’d been a strategist instead.” 

He looks pretty downcast about it. Mary leans forward. “Ever banished a ghost?”

Cas tilts his head, considering. “Not in quite some time, and not as a human. One must purify the physical remains with salt and fire, correct?”

“That’s about the size of it. We’ll have to figure out who the spook is first, though.”

Cas pulls the newspaper article over and frowns thoughtfully. “A divination ritual?”

Mary smiles. “It’s a historic cemetery, Cas. They’ll have records we can look through. We’ll want to see if there have been other weird deaths or if something new has happened that might be upsetting the residents. You any good at research?”

Cas considers this. “I understand and can communicate in any language that existed prior to the loss of my Grace,” he offers.

Mary stares.

“Any more recent languages I would have to learn in a human manner,” he adds apologetically.

Mary points at him with her pen. “Cas, you will officially be in charge of any and all non-English research we ever come across. Sorry about that.”

Cas sits up straighter, looking pleased.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They leave for Philadelphia two days later, in a new-to-them car that is legally theirs and is stocked with a comfortable supply of decidedly illegal equipment. Before they go Mary gives Cas a brief rundown of a passenger’s primary duties on any road trip, and by the time they reach Des Moines he’s mastered Duty One (find acceptable music on the radio), although it takes an unintentional but educational detour to Kankakee before he really gets the hang of Duty Two (navigate). He remains wary of being in public, but he loosens up a bit as they keep going and no one seems to recognize them. Getting out of Nebraska had definitely been a good idea.

By the time they pull off for the night outside of Fort Wayne, Mary feels confident that she’s given him a pretty good introduction to the beauty of the road trip. Truth be told, it was always one of her favourite parts of hunting. Once she was born Mary’s parents had tended to stick to jobs that were near Lawrence, but as she got older one or the other of them would take her along on jobs a day or two further afield. 

(Mary had never seen them hunt together, because one of the primary rules of hunter families is to never put both parents in danger at the same time. Obviously, as a tactic it’s hardly infallible.)

Dad’s trips had always been accompanied by lengthy lectures on the nature of the beast they were about to face and the history of the land around them, followed by a quiz to make sure she’d been listening. Mom’s had been characterized by spontaneity - she was endlessly fascinated by the people they drove by and the odd, intricate ways in which they constructed their lives, and she loved nothing more than to take unusual routes to their destination so that she and Mary could see what lay along the way. The hunt itself had mostly been an excuse, albeit a serious and important one.

In the educational, adventurous spirit of those long-ago trips, Mary stops in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania and gives Cas his first driving lesson in an empty field. It goes about as well as all first driving lessons go, which is to say that they both survive it but are scared spitless in the process.

They arrive in Philadelphia late that night and take shelter in a run-down motel with inch-thick bulletproof glass around the check-in desk. As soon as they get to their room, Cas sits down and turns on the television, flipping channels with a bewilderingly complex remote control unit until he finds some cartoons that were old even in Mary’s day.

“My first real hunt involved these,” he says contentedly. “I had helped on hunts before, of course, but this was the first one I participated in from start to finish. I had just returned from Purgatory and Dean and Sam allowed me to be their third wheel. There was a psychokinetic being manipulated by an unscrupulous nursing home director… Dean was nearly flattened by a falling anvil.”

Mary blinks at him in surprise, partly for the information - third wheel? _Anvil?_ \- and partly for the rambling, conversational tone. Delirium aside, Cas isn’t usually that talkative. He’ll answer questions and volunteer information, but he often seems just as content to sit there in silence as he is to be sociable.

“You mentioned Purgatory before,” she says, watching him carefully. “Are we talking Biblical Purgatory or is it a real place?”

“Both,” Cas says, face going still. “Dean and I were trapped there for nearly a year after we destroyed the Leviathan. Dean escaped. I remained behind.” He clicks off the television and turns away from her. “Is there something I must do before bed or can I just go to sleep?”

“Brush your teeth first,” Mary says. They’ve covered this before, but she doesn’t begrudge him the awkward topic change. Whatever happened in Purgatory, or Perdition or whatever it’s called, he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it.

They get ready for bed in silence, the easy camaraderie from the road trip now strained. Cas changes into his car t-shirt and lies down with his back to her, curled up small with both arms tucked up against the picture on the center of his chest. She’s not sure if it’s a defensive or offensive tactic. She’s no stranger to bad decisions, and it could be shame that’s knotting Cas up right now, but what if it’s something else? What if Dean abandoned him in Purgatory and he doesn’t want to tell her? She doesn’t want to think it - she can’t imagine her little boy, so caring and devoted to his baby brother even when most other moms warned her that he’d be jealous, leaving behind a friend in such a way - but what does she really know? What has his life turned him into?

And where was Sammy?

Mary turns off the lights and lies down, breathing quietly into the darkness. “I let the demon into our house,” she says, and the sound of her own voice shocks her just as much as it must startle Cas. “I was trying to save John, but I knew what a demon deal meant. Everything that’s happened to Dean and Sammy since… it’s all my fault.”

She expects more silence in return, maybe condemnation, and sucks in a breath when she hears Cas roll over. 

“Perhaps. But if you hadn’t, Dean and Sam wouldn’t even be alive. I, for one, am grateful for their existence.”

Well, that’s _true_ , technically - and it’s a relief that whatever happened hasn’t soured Cas on her boys - but... 

“That seems a little too simple, Cas.”

“Mary.” Somehow, even with the lights out, she can tell he’s doing his intense laser stare thing. “Dean and Sam’s destinies were long ordained. The forces arrayed against you - the resources dedicated to bringing their births about and to setting them on their path - you had very little chance of resisting those plans, especially when you were so ill-informed. John, Dean, Sam and I have all fallen prey to the same manipulations. There is no shame in it.”

Mary blows out a long, shaky breath. It’s a little weird to be reassured by the idea that she was so hopelessly outclassed, but it does make her feel a little bit better. Not much, but a bit. “Thanks, Cas.”

“If you are to feel guilty about anything, I would suggest that not preparing your family for the grim reality of the world around them is a far more serious transgression,” Cas continues earnestly.

“Thanks,” Mary says again, her tone considerably drier this time.

“Do you feel comforted?”

“Will you stop talking if I say yes?” Mary asks, a little snidely. Cas doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yes.”

“Very comforted.”

“I am glad. Sleep well, Mary.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Despite the unsavory nature of their motel, the next day they discover the cemetery itself to be beautiful and well-maintained. It’s also enormous.

“It’s the largest rural cemetery in North America!” the woman running tours out of the historic mansion chirps.

“Inconvenient,” Cas says, scowling.

“Yes, that’s exactly why we’re here!” Mary says loudly. “We’re writing a book and we’re very interested in the history of the cemetery and the house. Do you have a records room or any materials we could look through?”

“Of course!” the woman says, either not hearing Cas’s comment or deliberately writing it out of existence. “It’s right at the end of the hall, through there. Just let me know if you have any questions!”

“Okay,” Mary says in an undertone as they go down the hall, as much to reassure herself as to be certain Cas knows what to do. “We want to find out if there have been any other suspicious deaths, if anyone drowned, and if anything has changed in the cemetery recently to trigger the spirit. I figure we start with research and then we can question the docent as we go…”

She trails off as they enter the records room. Instead of the archives she was expecting, it’s a small room with study tables and… a computer? Is that what computers look like now? Holy Jesus.

They stare at it.

“Dean and Sam usually type something first,” Cas offers after a moment.

“It’s in _color,”_ Mary says faintly.

The perky woman at the front (Dora! Like the explorer! Mary smiles and nods) is very willing to help, although she seems a little thrown by their mutual inexperience with computers. Computers weren’t exactly _common_ in Mary’s day, but she’s seen them and even gotten a chance to use one once or twice. Cas, however, is completely at sea. He seems to be under the impression that glaring at the computer and occasionally poking the screen will intimidate it into doing what he wants.

“Okay,” Mary says out of the corner of her mouth, “I’ll do the research, you question Dora. Sound good?”

“If I must,” Cas says, looking utterly panicked. He turns to the docent. “How many people have drowned here?”

Mary winces, but the docent doesn’t seem too surprised.

“Oh, you heard about the accident the other day?” She nods knowingly. “A strange death in a graveyard, especially this close to Halloween - it’s generated a lot of interest, I’ll tell you. I’ve been working here for four years and it’s the first time I’ve seen anything like it - and this place can get a little spooky after dark!” She leans closer. “Now, I don’t want to cast any aspersions - she seemed like a nice enough young woman - but I think she’d been, you know,” she gestures. “ _Drinking.”_

“Oh?” Cas says, copying her conspiratorial tone.

“Mm-hm. They called it a drowning, but I’m pretty sure she just choked.”

“Were you here when it happened?” Cas asks.

Dora shakes her head. “I was inside - we’ve been having trouble with the heating system, it’s been blowing cold instead of hot?”

“Cold spots,” Cas agrees.

Dora blinks but keeps going. “I did see her out the window as she was coming up the path. She didn’t look like she was drunk when she walked, but she must have had a bottle on her because when I found her later she was _soaked_ in it.” She shrugs. “It’s a shame, really. We’ve been having issues lately with kids vandalising the place and I think she must have been one of the troubled ones. It happens sometimes - they’ll sneak in here on a dare or because they don’t think anyone will notice.”

“What kind of vandalism?” Cas asks, leaning forward.

Dora leans back - Cas is probably doing the stare thing. Mary gives up on the pretext of research and turns her attention fully to Cas and Dora in case Cas starts pushing too hard. “Um, bible verses mostly.”

“And when did all this start?”

“A few weeks ago. Look, why don’t I get you a copy of our cemetery guide? I’m sure it will be helpful.” She flees.

Mary frowns. She would have liked to ask the woman more about the graffiti and any recent changes in the cemetery.

Cas gives her a shy sideways look. “I just questioned a suspect.”

“Yes?” Mary says, carefully leaving off the _I know, I was right here._

“And she told me things.” He smiles.

Mary gives up and smiles back. “Yeah, she did. Good job, Cas.”

Cas beams at her.

They set themselves to poring over the cemetery’s records, Mary at the computer and Cas diligently sifting through hardcopy cemetery guidebooks and newsletters. Mary waits until she’s sure Cas is involved in his research and then, feeling vaguely guilty, clicks on the icon Dora told her to use for ‘googling anything you want to know’ (what does that even _mean?_ ) and painstakingly types ‘CASTIEL’.

It gives her results, which is surprising because she wasn’t sure she was spelling it right. She clicks on the first line of type and skims through the paragraph description, keeping one eye on Cas at the table.

So. ‘Castiel’ is indeed an angel’s name. One source lists him as the Angel of Thursday. Another lists him as the angel of solitude and tears who presides over the death of kings. It doesn’t say anything about him being a soldier, although to be fair he doesn’t seem to be one of the better-known angels.

She sighs and closes down the googling thing. She’s not sure if that makes Cas sane and an ex-angel, or crazy but well-informed. Either way, it might be best for her to proceed on the assumption that he’s been telling the truth. 

She goes back to the research she was supposed to be doing, burying her confusion and apprehension in the search for information. It’s stopgap measure at best, she knows, but it’s better than nothing and at least it’s useful.

They work for a few more hours, and then finally Mary straightens with a groan, arching her back to ease her cramping muscles. “All right. I need a break. Have you found anything?”

Cas shakes his head. “The guidebooks are mostly focused on the lives of the deceased and not the manners of their deaths unless they were particularly spectacular. I still have several newsletters to read, though.”

Mary nods tiredly. “I found a couple of drownings, but most of the records tend to be pretty circumspect about the cause of death if it was, you know, scandalous at all. Nothing really stands out yet.”

Cas neatens one of his document stacks. “What should we do next?”

Mary considers this. “Our best bet now is to talk to the ME, probably,” she says. “Unattended death under suspicious circumstances - they’ll have to do an autopsy and at least a cursory investigation.” She stops. “Well. Or they would have. I guess we’ll find out if that’s still true.”

She eyes Cas speculatively. They probably have enough in the car to go from ‘tidy academics’ to ‘professional law enforcement’ without having to return to the motel, which will save time and might even cut down on the chance of either of them catching anything communicable from the soft furnishings. “Let’s get to the car.”

Sure enough, there’s a tie in the trunk that matches Cas’s shirt well enough to pass for dressy, and despite the time of year it’s warm enough for him to plausibly go without a blazer. She carefully parts and combs his hair; scruffy is fine and even expected for a scholar, but he should look tidier as a cop. It’s a good look on him, anyway. 

Cas endures all this attention with a degree of bemused patience that suggests he’s used to being manhandled in such a fashion, and stands quietly with his hands in his pockets while Mary ties back her own hair, tucks in her shirt, and changes her sensible flats for heels. The final touch is the badges - and boy aren’t those an adventure to fake these days, she’d had to get a junior police lieutenant blackout drunk in Fort Wayne - and an air of total confidence.

Cas, she’s surprised to note, manages the last one very effectively. When they first enter the police station the desk sergeant tries to railroad them - Indiana doesn’t carry much authority in Philadelphia, it would seem - and Cas gives her a look of such stony disdain that she actually offers both of them some coffee while they wait for the ME. It’s pretty terrible coffee, but Mary appreciates the gesture.

The ME finally arrives after Mary’s finished both of their coffees - Cas had taken one sip, made a face, and handed his over - and is just starting to think about finding a bathroom. The ME looks tired, harassed, and not entirely pleased about being disturbed.

“Long trip for nothing,” she says brusquely, handing over a file. “Body’s already been released to the family. You should have called ahead.”

Mary shrugs, passing the file to Cas. “We were already in the area following up a lead on a different case. I doubt this is actually the girl we’re looking for, but you know the brass.” They share a look of mutual frustration, and the ME’s expression warms a little.

“Well, it’s a strange one, that’s for sure. I don’t blame you for having a look just for curiosity’s sake.”

“Oh?” Mary prompts.

“The girl was an alcoholic, to be sure - her liver was a mess - but she wasn’t actually drunk when she died. And she drowned - get this - in _gin.”_

Mary blinks. “You mean choked?”

The ME shakes her head, grinning. “Oh, no. _Drowned_. Her lungs were full of the stuff. None in her stomach.”

Mary frowns. Usually a drowning person swallows water as well as breathing it in. “But -”

“Like I said,” the ME says. “Weird one.” She cranes her neck to peer past Mary at Cas. “See anything?”

Cas glances at Mary and then shakes his head. “Her death was most curious. I do not think, however, that she is from Indiana.”

The ME raises her eyebrows at Mary. Mary rolls her eyes and shrugs, trying to convey _my partner talks like he swallowed a dictionary, but what can you do?_ without actually saying anything out loud. From the soft huff of laughter, the message gets across.

“All right. Well, enjoy your stay in Filthydelphia anyway. Try not to get shot.” She takes back the file and turns to go, then pauses by the door and catches Mary’s eye. “Hey. If you’re trying to kill time tonight, I get off at seven.”

Mary smiles. “Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Mary,” Cas says in an undertone as they leave for the parking lot, “that last comment she made, was that a flirtation?”

Mary stops dead and reviews the conversation in her head. “Huh. Maybe?”

“I find it reassuring that you weren’t certain either,” Cas says wearily.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They take refuge in a nearby diner after pausing at the car for Mary to change into comfortable shoes and for Cas to grab the materials they’d borrowed from the cemetery. Mary orders herself pie and hot tea and, when Cas is still staring in perplexity at the menu five minutes later, orders the same for Cas.

“Okay,” she says when the pie’s done and the process of making tea has been explained (by Cas, with what really sounds like a first-hand account of Chinese medicinal tea practices in 1500 BC) and explored (by Cas again, who decides to try sweetening his tea with blueberry pancake syrup). “When you were looking through the guidebooks, did you see anything related to Prohibition? Or temperance? I’m thinking that our spook might be on a righteous mission as opposed to a revenge one.”

“Because of the Bible verses?” Cas guesses. “Hmm. A possibility. I think I do recall seeing something on the subject.”

“Great. Hand me the newsletters and I’ll see if I can figure out what the trigger was.”

Cas hands them over. “Why are you sure there must have been a trigger? The cemetery doesn’t seem to get many visitors. Perhaps the girl who died was simply the first alcoholic to visit.”

Mary makes a face. “Possible, but I doubt it. Especially given what Dora said about the teenagers that break in sometimes - if some of them aren’t using the privacy to get drunk then I know nothing about the human condition.”

They pass the next hour or so in silence, interrupted only by tea and pie refills, and then Cas says “This looks promising,” just as Mary crows “Gotcha!”

“You first,” Mary says generously.

Cas holds up his guidebook. “Timothy Shay Arthur, died in 1885, known for his moralizing tales of temperance. He published over 150 novels.”

“That sounds pretty spot-on,” Mary agrees. “Especially when you hear this: a few months ago when they were building a parking lot in west Philadelphia, they uncovered a graveyard that used to belong to a charity hospital for the poor. Want to guess where they reburied the bodies after they were excavated?”

Cas frowns. “I would guess… in the cemetery we visited?”

“Yes, Cas,” Mary laughs. “Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that more than a couple of those people died from intemperance of some sort or another.”

“So Timothy Arthur is attempting to go back to his mission,” Cas concludes. “It does sound plausible.”

“All right.” Mary gathers her papers and stacks them with Cas’s guidebooks. “We’ll hit the cemetery tonight after it closes, salt and burn, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Bobby was just a friend,” Cas says. “But otherwise your plan is sound.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They lurk outside the cemetery until night has fully fallen, and then Cas boosts Mary over the back wall so she can pull him up in turn. They make their way through the graveyard, using their flashlights sparingly until they reach the actual grave. The cemetery is mostly screened from view by trees and the wall, but it’s also next to a busy road and a trolley stop. There’s no reason to call undue attention to themselves.

There’s a thump and a breathy, pained noise as Cas barks his shin on a headstone. Okay. There’s a _little_ reason to call attention to themselves.

Mary pulls out the guidebook and uses the flashlight for a moment, shielding it from view as best she can with her body. “We’re looking for Section L, Lot 182.”

Cas consults his own documents, rubbing his injured leg with his free hand. “The sections are labeled, but the lots are not. We’ll have to search once we get there.”

Mary makes a face. Inconvenient, as Cas might say. “Fine. Up ahead?”

“To the right.”

In a stroke of luck, Section L is located behind a large mausoleum which sits squarely between them and the front gate. As long as no one’s working late in the historic mansion tonight, they should have some privacy.

“Split up. Yell if you find something.”

Mary cuts left and Cas goes right. Cemeteries don’t bother her much - on the one hand, she knows exactly what might be lurking in one, but on the other she also knows how to kill most of those things and familiarity does breed contempt. This might be her first hunt in years, but it’s a familiar dance. There’s nothing to fear from the vast majority of the inhabitants here.

_John Winchester_

Startled, Mary turns back to the gravestone she just passed. It reads ‘John Whitechapel’ now.

“Stupid ghost tricks,” she says aloud, rattled.

“I believe I have found it,” Cas calls.

Shaking off her unease, Mary makes her way over to him. He’s standing next to a large block of granite.

“Good work - “ she begins, but Cas cuts her off.

“‘Under this monument lie Timothy Shay Arthur, Eliza Alden Arthur, Rear-Admiral James Alden, Cora Arthur Billings, Walter Matthew Arthur, Thomas Richard Arthur, Emma Arthur, and Clarence Ernest Arthur’,” he reads.

There’s a long, depressed silence.

“I miss my mom,” Mary says. Mom was so good at thinking her way out of things like this.

“I miss Bobby,” Cas agrees. He shines his flashlight at the ground and sighs, long and heartfelt. “It’s going to take a very long time to dig all of this.”

It really will. Plus, they’ll have to keep going until they’ve accounted for all the bodies just in case they miss Timothy by accident, and the chances of his spirit leaving them alone all the way through it are, quite frankly, vanishingly small.

“Hey, Cas,” Mary says, grasping at straws. “You said you’d banished a ghost as an angel before?”

“Yes,” Cas says. “It was a simple enough operation, but it required a portion of my Grace, which I no longer possess.” His voice is disgusted as he says it, and there’s defeat and depression in the slump of his shoulders.

“Any chance you could recreate it with one of those sigils you use? Or jury-rig that angel-banishing one or something?”

Cas tips his head back, thinking. “Perhaps,” he says finally. “I think… yes. Maybe. There are some obscure variations I could take advantage of, and if I draw the sigils in salt and fire and include his name… it will take time, though, and the spirit will notice as soon as I start.”

“Well,” Mary says, “it’s still better than digging all night, right? I’ll watch your back.”

She opens their duffel bag and starts distributing supplies: the salt and lighter fluid to Cas, the iron crowbar for herself. Cas takes his items and gives her an uneasy look.

“Good luck?” Mary says, grinning as brightly as possible. From Cas’s dubious expression, it mostly comes across as manic.

“A good hunt to you also,” he says, and then adds sincerely, “I hope you survive.”

“... Backatcha, Cas.”

Mary keeps her back to Cas as he works, watching the surrounding graveyard for any signs of trouble. She can hear the whisper of salt being poured and smell the sharp tang of butane.

“Be sober, be vigilant,” says a voice from right behind her, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Mary whirls and swings her crowbar. The spirit vanishes in a crackle.

“We should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world -”

She swings faster, this time, but while it makes him stop talking he’s also figured out to stand further away from her and when she misses with her swing he sends her flying with a gesture. 

The mausoleum, it turns out, is a lot less convenient as a landing pad. She loses her hold on the crowbar and has to scramble after it, wheezing.

Cas is yelling her name from the gravestone, but there’s no time to reassure him.

“For all have sinned -”

“‘Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy!’” Mary snaps, swinging her crowbar through the spirit’s midsection. He crackles and vanishes, looking irritated. “Work faster, Cas!”

She staggers upright, clutching her crowbar in both hands. Cas is on his hands and knees by the gravestone, working feverishly in between darting worried glances in her direction.

“And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”

Mary braces herself and whirls, crowbar at the ready, but this time he’s too close. Her arm passes through him instead of the cold iron of the crowbar, and she can’t move and she can’t breathe and all she can taste is gin.

“Mary!” Cas yells. “Get down! Get down now!”

Her knees buckle underneath her. There’s a flash of fire and a _whump_ that knocks her flat. Timothy screams in rage and pain, flaming out in spectacular fashion, and then there’s air in her lungs again. She rolls over, gasping and coughing. “Cas?”

There’s no answer. She gets to her knees and pulls herself up on a convenient gravestone, kicking the crowbar painfully as she goes. Cas is lying flat on his back several feet away from the Arthur monument. As she watches he groans and stirs.

She staggers over to him and collapses by his legs. It’s a good thing he landed where he did - any further to either side and he would have brained himself on a headstone when he was thrown clear.

He props himself up on his elbows and squints at the monument. It’s smoking and part of it is still on fire.

“I think it worked?” he says.

“It worked,” Mary confirms, flopping over to lie next to him. “Ow.”

“Dora and the groundskeepers are going to be very sad when they see that,” Cas says, lying back down again. He’s right - besides the fact that he lit the grass and the part of the monument with Timothy’s name on it on fire, he also dumped about seven pounds of salt in eldritch symbols all around it. That’s not going to grow back any time soon.

“But hey,” Mary says, holding up one hand. “We still thought outside the box and kicked spirit butt. Go team.”

Cas stares at her hand for a moment, and then raises his own until they’re pressed together, palm to palm. It’s a like a particularly slow-motion high five. Close enough. 

“I was helpful to you?” Cas asks hesitantly, like he’s afraid of the answer.

Mary taps his fingers with her own. “You were super helpful, Cas.” She takes back her hand and pushes herself upright. From there she can see that Cas is smiling quietly. “Come on. We should get out of here before someone notices the fire and general destruction.”

Cas sighs.

“Also the motel has hot water.”

That gets him moving.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They leave Philadelphia as the sun rises, heading west for no other reason than because they need a direction to head in and west goes on for the longest. It’s a more leisurely trip, this time - they stop to eat at sit-down restaurants instead of getting takeout (Happy Meal toys have not improved since 1983, in Mary’s opinion) and when they pass farm stands and signs for off-road attractions they pull over to look. It’s like the old road trips Mary used to take with her mom.

They stop in the same field in rural Pennsylvania that they used on the way in and Mary gives Cas his second driving lesson. Afterwards, they sit on the hood of the car and share a root beer.

“Hey, Cas?” Mary says after the root beer’s gone. “What are my boys like? The little things, I mean. What do they like? What do they do?”

Cas considers this request. “Dean likes pie and beer and loud music and his car. Sam likes plaid button-down shirts and floppy hair and he loves to learn…”

Mary leans back against the windshield of the car and closes her eyes, letting Cas’s words wash over her. She imagines her boys as he speaks - hunting and saving the world and playing pranks on each other. She builds up personalities in her head, trying to read between the lines.

“Hey, Cas?” she says when he seems to be winding down a little. “Are they - are they mad at me? For what I did.”

“No, Mary,” Cas says gently. “They miss you.”

Mary breathes and opens her eyes. The day is hazy-blue, the kind that can either clear up or cloud over given enough time. There’s an airplane far above. Mary wonders how much airplanes have changed in the last thirty years. Probably not as much as her babies have.

She turns to look at Cas. He’s backlit by the sun, and for a moment she thinks she might be seeing him as he was when he was still an angel. Then he moves to keep the sun from shining in her eyes, and the moment’s gone.

“Do you think I should call them?” 

If she never calls them, then maybe this is still some kind of dream. Maybe she can still find a way home, to John and Dean and baby Sammy. 

Cas lets the question sit for a moment, giving it the weight it deserves. “Yes. I think they would be glad to hear from you. To meet you.”

Mary swallows hard.

“Okay. Give me their number.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the dead people in this chapter are actually buried in the Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia, although I did make up a few for comedic purposes (Timothy Shay Arthur really did have seven kids, but I have no idea what their names were or whether they were interred with him). It’s a very pretty cemetery with some highly entertaining dead people and you should visit it if you get the chance. It also has the tallest funerary monument in North America, which is pretty cool! (It belongs to a dentist. Go figure.)
> 
> Also - yes, I know, the probability of a small non-profit organization like a cemetery historical society having the resources and manpower to completely digitize 200 years of archival records is slim. Let it go. I did it for the lols.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Dean’s potty mouth, some violence, non-spoilery reference to 9x07 ‘Bad Boys’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: more driving routes (yes, I did actually locate a rural Pennsylvanian pond on Google Maps), the history of cell phones  
> NEW TAGS: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester

They stop at the next gas station and buy a tiny mobile phone that looks like something out of Star Trek. Mary lets Cas take the lead - he seems to be familiar with its operation, at least up to a point; apparently the last time he used one he’d been able to circumvent a lot of its physical limitations by using his angel mojo. Fortunately, the gas station clerk is willing to give her a crash course in how to charge it and set up an account.

Phone acquired, Mary drives them down the road a ways and pulls off next to a small pond. Cas carefully programs Dean’s number into the phone, marking it with a picture of an apple pie, and hands it over.

Mary stares down at it for a long moment and then gets out and goes to lean against the front bumper, suddenly unable to breathe in the close confines of the car. The phone feels very heavy in her hands.

Cas gets out behind her and hovers uncertainly by the door. “Would you like me to suddenly become interested in something at a distance from here?”

Mary forces a smile. “No, Cas. If you don’t mind I’d like your company.”

Cas nods. “Of course.” He’s wearing his car shirt again. He reminds her of Dean and his obsessive attachment to his favorite clothes when he was little. The day he finally outgrew his Star Trek pajamas a casual bystander would have been excused for thinking the end of the world had just detonated in Dean’s bedroom. It’s no longer surprising to her that Cas apparently wore the same tan overcoat every day for… well, it must have been years, probably. Even given that he was an angel at the time -

Cas shifts a little, watching her anxiously. Mary flushes in embarrassment and presses the ‘send’ button before she can think herself into losing her nerve.

The phone rings twice, and then Dean says “Yeah, hello?”

She hadn’t expected to feel anything but nerves when he answered. She knew she wouldn’t recognize his voice. To all intents and purposes he’s stranger to her.

Unexpectedly, her throat closes up. Dean’s voice is deep and strong, like his father’s.

“Okay, you’re going to have to say something or I’m hanging up,” Dean says, annoyed.

“Hi, baby,” Mary says, and by some miracle her voice only wavers a little bit. “It’s Mom.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end. 

“Now, you listen to me, you _son of a bitch_ , don’t you dare use her voice you fucking piece of trash -”

“Language, Dean,” Mary says automatically, taken aback.

“ - I will find you and I will fucking _end you_ -”

“Dean -” 

“ - if you wanted me pissed off, well, congratulations because you’ve done it you _fucking dick_ -”

“I’m here with Cas!” Mary blurts. Dean hesitates. “Look, I’m going to put Cas on. Okay? It’s really me, sweetheart.”

There’s an inarticulate growl of rage at the endearment. Mary winces and holds the phone out to Cas, who backs away, looking alarmed. Mary gives him a pleading look and his shoulders slump. He reaches out for the phone in much the same way that a man might approach an irritated rattlesnake.

“Hello Dean.” He grimaces and holds the phone a little further from his ear. Mary can hear shouting, although she can’t distinguish individual words. 

“Dean.” Cas says patiently. “Dean. Dean, if you want me to explain, you’re going to have to let me - yes, I’m really me.” This time Mary can clearly hear the ‘Prove it!’ 

Cas sighs. “Fine. Uh… the first thing I ever said to you was ‘I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.’ And then you stabbed me in the chest with the demon-killing knife, which ultimately did very little although given the circumstances you can be excused for - yes, I’ll shut up.”

He stops and waits for a long moment. Mary leans closer, but she can’t hear Dean’s voice at all now. Cas shrugs helplessly. “Dean, are you still there? All right, I’ll wait for you to pull over.”

Mary frowns. She’s new to this mobile phone thing, but driving with it must be distracting.

“Yes, Dean, I’m still here,” Cas says, and Mary forces her attention back to the present. “I can confirm that the woman you spoke to was in fact your mother. She was resurrected by an unknown group of angels -” he sighs and waits patiently for a moment. “Because I saw the spellwork myself and recognized it from - no, Dean, I wasn’t trying to - because it requires a willing angelic sacrifice in addition to a minimum of seven angels working the spell in concert, so it wouldn’t have been helpful, that’s why.” He gives Mary an apologetic look, and Mary imagines that if he were familiar with the gesture he’d be making ‘talk talk talk’ motions with his free hand. 

“Yes.” He listens for a while. Mary can hear the rumble of Dean’s voice, calmer now. “Yes, all right. I understand. I will. No, I - I know. I will.” He holds the phone out, still looking unhappy.

Mary takes it nervously. “Hello?”

“Mom?” Dean’s voice sounds different this time, uncertain and far less gruff, and suddenly all Mary can imagine is watching him and Sammy grow up together, seeing their transformation from sweet little boys into grown men. The trouble they would have gotten into, all the little things they would have done that she would have been proud of. All the lost artwork on the fridge - she never saw Sammy’s handprint turkeys at Thanksgiving or Dean’s first attempt at cutting snowflakes at Christmas. She has no idea what they dressed up as for Halloween and she never got to teach them to swim or ride their bicycles.

“Hi kiddo,” she chokes, scrubbing the sleeve of her shirt against her cheeks to wipe away her tears. She needs to get a hold of herself, fast. It’s not fair to Dean to fall apart on him. “Were you driving when you answered the phone? That can’t be safe.”

Dean gives a strangled laugh. “I pulled over. Don’t worry. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sweetie. I’m fine. A little confused, but hey. Aren’t there supposed to be flying cars in the future?”

As an attempt at levity, it totally misfires. Dean makes a pained noise. “Oh God, Mom, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Well, it’s a little muddled,” Mary admits. “I remember the nursery and - and the fire, but I remember seeing you and Sammy all grown up, too.”

“Yeah,” Dean says quietly. “You, um, you stayed behind. Protected the house. Me and Sammy, we investigated, and that’s when you saw us. You - you went down in a fight against a poltergeist.”

Mary sighs. It does answer a few things. “Well, I guess at least I didn’t become a vengeful spirit. I’m sorry you two had to deal with that, kiddo.” She takes a deep breath, and then another. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all of this.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Dean says awkwardly. “I mean, we’re okay. We did fine. We probably would have ended up in it sooner or later, right? Family business.”

Mary shakes her head. She would have done whatever she had to to prevent - 

Okay. Well. That’s probably a bad thing to say.

“I guess it was, in the end,” she says instead, and tries not to feel fatalistic. “Cas, Cas has told me a little bit about what you’ve been up to. I’m so proud of you, Dean.”

“Oh, well,” Dean says, missing ‘modest’ by about a mile. “Cas, he’s, you know. He exaggerates.”

Mary laughs.

Dean laughs too. “Okay, yeah, he’s a terrible liar. But he’s a good guy, Mom. He’ll keep you safe.”

“Is he actually…” she trails off, trying to figure out how to convey either ‘an angel’ or ‘crazy’ without offending Cas.

“An angel?” Dean finishes. “Yeah, he is. Or was. He’s like the only non-di - uh, he’s, he’s pretty much the only good one in the bunch. Angels are a bunch of jerks, as it turns out.”

“Well, that’s disillusioning,” Mary says dryly.

“Tell me about it.”

“Hey, Dean?” She bites her lip, fighting to keep the nervousness from showing in her voice. The conversation with Dean has already gone so much better than she’d feared it would. She’s scared to press her luck, but she doesn’t have a choice. “Is your brother around? Is Sammy with you?”

“No. I mean, not right now. I went into town for supplies, he’s back at the bunker. We just got back from this thing in New York so everything in the fridge is - well, anyway, I can text you his number. I should probably warn him first,” he adds as an afterthought.

“That might be a good idea,” Mary concedes. “You two have a bunker? Honestly?” It doesn’t sound very homey, which is a shame. Still, it’s probably very easy to defend. And clean.

“Hey, it’s a really nice bunker,” Dean says, although he doesn’t sound offended. “You’ll like it, it has great water pressure.”

“Well, that is really important,” Mary agrees. “You should have seen the place we stayed in last night, it was a total pit.”

“Where are you right now?” Dean asks. 

“Nowhere, Pennsylvania. It’s very scenic. We found a pond.”

“Ha. Well, we’re in Lebanon, Kansas. We could come to you, or - or meet you halfway, or you could come here. If you wanted to. Cas knows how to find it.” His voice trails off a little at the end, trying for casual and ending up with uncertain instead.

“I would love to,” Mary says, giddy with relief. “I’ll tell you what - we’ll start making our way to you, and that’ll give you a chance to warn Sammy we’re coming and clean up a little -”

“Hey!” Dean says, mock-offended. “My bunker is _spotless_. Mostly.”

Mary laughs. “Let us know if you want us to bring you anything - supplies, or - or food, or - when you were little you really loved those Matchbox cars, we could -” she cuts herself off, aware that she’s babbling. “Um. You probably have a real car now, though, so those wouldn’t be necessary.”

“I still love those,” Dean blurts. “And Sammy, you know, Sammy’s crazy about the little army guys, the green plastic ones?”

“We’ll get some of those too,” Mary says, smiling. “And you’ll, you’ll let me know when I can call him?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Figure twenty minutes home, ten minutes to find him in the library - you should see the library in this place, Mom, and Sammy’s such a ner- uh, intellectual, he can really disappear in there. Um, ten minutes for shock, maybe five for him to be all gir- um, emotional, you can probably call him in about forty-five minutes? An hour, tops.”

“Okay,” Mary says. “Okay. An hour. I can do that.” She swallows. “I love you, honey. Drive safe. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his voice choked. “I will. I’m - I’m really glad you’re back, Mom.”

“Me too,” Mary says, and a moment later the call disconnects.

She turns to Cas and gestures helplessly. She can’t think of anything to say. God, why didn’t she ask Dean if he and Sammy were okay? It’s such a basic question. She should have asked it. What if one of them is sick or unhappy? It was a quick conversation, for all that she feels like she’s run a marathon. It might not have come up.

Cas gives her a strained little smile. “That seemed to go well. Eventually.”

“Yes,” Mary says. “Yeah. Um. We’re going to go to the - they have a bunker? I’m going to call Sam in an hour. Dean said you know where the bunker is?”

The smile slips a little on Cas’s face. God, it’s probably some dismal hole in the ground. “Yes. I can direct you there.”

“Okay.” Mary nods. “Okay. I just - have to survive the next hour somehow. Okay. No problem.”

Cas gently takes her head in his hands and plants a careful kiss on the exact center of her forehead.

“Sam is a compassionate and kind young man. It will be fine.”

Mary blows out a long breath. “Thanks Cas.” She gives him a lopsided smile. “That was comforting.”

As it turns out, Sammy calls _her_ half an hour later. Either Dean underestimated his little brother’s ability to roll with weird new information, or Dean practiced some seriously unsafe driving practices getting home. 

Mary stares at the phone in total panic. “It’s only been half an hour!”

Cas’s forehead creases. “Would you like me to answer it?”

“No. No. I can do this. Um, it’s the green button - ? Okay.” She raises the phone to her ear. “Sammy?”

There’s a shocked silence on the other end. “Oh my God.”

Sam’s voice is deep too, or it would be if he wasn’t, from the sound of it, having a slight panic attack. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Oh my God,” Sam says again. “I mean, I didn’t think Dean would be kidding about this, but - oh my God. You - you sound just like -” he cuts off abruptly. Mary’s eyes fill with tears. Sammy was only six months old when she died, how would he remember - 

Wait. That’s right. The poltergeist. He would know what she sounds like. _God._ Until then he probably didn’t. He wouldn’t have remembered it from when he was a baby.

“I’m sorry. I know this is a shock,” she says, not even bothering to wipe her eyes this time. He voice is steady, and that’s enough.

“A good shock!” Sam says. “No, it’s, it’s a good shock, I just - I, I probably should have thought of what to say before I called you.”

Mary laughs shakily. “It doesn’t really help that much, actually. How are you, Sammy? Are you okay? Do you boys need anything?”

“No, we’re fine. We really are. We’ve got, we’ve got a place to stay and we’re safe and, um, Dean actually bought vegetables this time so we might not die of malnutrition anytime soon which is new and different - um, not that we can’t take care of ourselves, we can, we just - he, he really likes beef jerky? Like, a lot?”

Mary laughs. Apparently the babbling thing has been handed down successfully to both of her children. “It’s funny, because when he was little he really loved peas.”

“Seriously?” Sam says, with all the glee of a little brother finding dirt on his older sibling. “Peas, really?”

“I grant you, mostly for their ballistic properties,” Mary concedes. Sam laughs.

“Okay, so, not much has changed, then.” She hears him swallow hard. “Mom, um… it’s not that I’m not glad you’re back, but it’s - good stuff doesn’t really - what I mean is, _how_ are you back? And, and why?”

Mary sighs. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m not really sure about either of those. Cas saw at least part of the resurrection spell and he says it was a group of - of angels,” yeah, saying it out loud doesn’t make it sound any less absurd, “but neither of us knows why they did it.”

“Well,” Sam says thoughtfully, “this place has a ton of research material. Maybe when you get here we can dig something up.”

“What kind of bunker did you guys build?” Mary asks, bemused and a little proud.

“Oh, we didn’t,” Sam says. “We kind of found it. It belonged to this secret organization called the Men of Letters.”

“Oh, them.” At least it’s probably more livable than she’d expected.

“Wait, you know who they are?” Sam asks, stunned.

“Sure,” Mary says. “They were pretty much gone by the time I was born, but your grandparents dealt with them from time to time before they all vanished. Your grandfather wasn’t much of a fan, but Mom mostly seemed to think they were funny.”

“Funny,” Sam says flatly.

“She never really explained why,” Mary says contemplatively. She’d always suspected that half of her mother’s amusement came from the way Dad would start sputtering every time the subject came up.

“Did they know Henry Winchester?” Sam asks.

“John’s father Henry Winchester?” Mary asks, completely derailed.

“Guess not,” Sam says in an undertone. “Yeah, Dad’s father. He time-traveled here to get away from a Knight of Hell. It was kind of complicated.”

“Actually, it explains a lot,” Mary says thoughtfully. Given when John’s father had walked out, in conjunction with when the Men of Letters had stopped being a presence, it explains a _hell_ of a lot. It might even go a ways to explaining why her father had disliked John so much. “Wow. A whole lot of things just fell into place with that little tidbit. Is Henry still around?”

“No,” Sam says regretfully. “He died taking out the Knight of Hell. And now she’s back, so.”

“I’m sorry, Sammy.” That’s the way it goes all too often, unfortunately. “I’m glad you got to meet him, anyway.” At least her boys got to meet one of their grandparents, even if it was under what sounds like pretty fraught circumstances.

“It was definitely interesting,” Sam says dryly. “Mom, do you have an idea of when you might be able to get here? Dean didn’t really say where you were.”

Mary makes some quick calculations. “We’re about a day out, in Pennsylvania. We’ll probably overnight on our way, so I’d guess tomorrow evening.”

Sam exhales. “Okay. You’ll let us know when you get close? It’s just, you know, we kind of need to clean up. Dean looks like he’s going to have an aneurysm.”

Mary laughs. “We’ll give you fair warning, I promise. I’m going to get off the phone so we can start driving, but you give me a call if you need to, okay, sweetheart? Or if you want to. I’m pretty sure I know how to keep this thing charged.”

Sam chuckles. “Will do. Say hi to Cas for me?”

“I will. I love you, Sammy.”

“I love you too, Mom,” Sam says quietly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This time Mary ditches the side roads and goes straight for the highways, plotting a straight shot from Pennsylvania to Lebanon and only detouring once to find a toy store. The drive is mostly silent. Mary’s too nervous to talk, and Cas seems to respect that. He sits quietly in the passenger seat, watching the scenery. Neither of them turns on the radio.

When it starts getting dark, Cas says “I could drive for a while, if you like. This route seems to be fairly straightforward.”

Mary wavers. Two driving lessons does not a licensed driver make, but Cas is right that he can probably handle it. And it will get them there faster.

“All right,” she says. “But wake me up if you need to.”

She wakes up of her own accord several hours later, stiff and headachey from her cramped position. The horizon is just starting to lighten and turn colors with the sunrise. Cas doesn’t take his eyes off the road as she stirs, his hands carefully at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. His grip is not quite white-knuckled, and he’s driving at precisely the speed limit.

They swap places so that Mary can pull off and find them a place for breakfast. They have tasteless sandwiches and lukewarm coffee in the car, hollow-eyed and tense, before pulling back on the highway to keep driving.

Mary estimates they’re about an hour from the bunker when Cas asks her to pull over so he can get something from the trunk. Her instinct is to refuse and keep going, but he’s generally such an undemanding copilot that she pushes down her irritation and pulls off into the parking lot of a small strip mall. It wouldn’t hurt to stretch and freshen up a little so she’s not a total mess when she meets - when she sees Dean and Sam.

She swallows down a spike of nausea and raises her hands above her head until her spine cracks. It’s ridiculous to be nervous. She’s spoken to both of them on the phone and there’s nothing to be frightened of. It will almost certainly be awkward, but they’re _family_. They’ll sort it out.

She’s startled out of her reverie by the sound of the trunk closing. Cas is standing by the back of the car, duffel bag in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“Directions,” he says, handing it over. “They should be straightforward, but please look them over before I go. You’ll have to call when you’re outside - there’s only one key.”

Mary takes them automatically. “What do you mean? You’re not coming?”

“No.” Cas fiddles with the strap of his bag, staring at the ground. “I’m not, I’m not welcome.”

Mary frowns. Neither of her boys had said anything that would have made her think that. Sam had asked her to say hello on his behalf with genuine fondness in his voice, and Dean had outright told her that Cas would watch her back.

On the other hand, when she’d met Cas he’d been homeless and sick, and Nebraska isn’t so far from Kansas that he couldn’t have appealed to Dean and Sam for help. Perhaps it was a matter of pride, but Cas is a soldier and a tactician. As soon as he’d realised he was going up against an entire group of hostile angels practicality should have taken precedence. Now that she actually stops to think about it, it doesn’t make sense.

“Why do you say that?”

Cas looks away, avoiding eye contact completely. “It’s too dangerous. I warned you before that I would bring you harm. All of you have been through enough and I will not be responsible for compromising the sanctuary of the bunker.”

The words are firm, but the defeated monotone of his delivery is worrying. There’s definitely something else going on, and Dean is right - Cas is a terrible liar.

“I’ll tell you what,” Mary says, keeping her tone friendly. “Let’s go in and have some lunch and we can talk about it a little bit.”

Cas shakes his head stubbornly.

“Cas,” she repeats, ditching most of the friendliness. “That wasn’t a suggestion, I am telling you what we’re going to do. If you think I’m going to leave you here tired and on foot you’re crazy. We’re going to go have something to eat, and then I’m going to find you a place to stay for at least the night, and then we are going to figure out where to go from there. Do you understand me?”

Cas wavers and caves, his shoulders slumping miserably. “Very well.”

“Put your bag back. We’ll go to the diner on the corner.” The sign says 'Biggersons', which is frankly a terrible name for a restaurant, but there doesn't seem to be anything else nearby.

Cas turns back to the car, and then stops. “I am resolute. You will not change my mind.”

Mary points imperiously at the diner. “March.”

The diner is too busy for them to grab the reasonably protected corner booth that would make Mary most comfortable, but on the bright side the general hubbub is enough to mask anything but heated conversation. Mary waits until they’ve got their food and Cas is picking dejectedly at his french fries before fixing him with a stern look.

“Cas, is there something you want to tell me?”

He rubs his forehead with one hand. “There is something that I _don’t_ want to tell you, which I suspect is what you’re actually after.”

Mary clings to her patience. Literalism is just Cas’s way - she can recognize that by now. “Fair enough. What is it that you don’t want to tell me?”

Cas sighs. “I have been an angel for a very long time. Twice in my life I have become human, or near enough to it. The first time was shortly before the Great Battle was slated to take place between Michael and Lucifer, and the second was a few weeks ago. For an angel, becoming human is a confusing and terrifying experience. We are accustomed to relying on our Grace for defense, sustainment, and information, and to be without it is extremely frightening. Human emotions are also foreign to us and can be confusing and disorienting.”

Mary nods. She suspects Cas is stalling, but at least he’s talking. She’s willing to put up with a certain amount of rambling exposition if it helps him feel comfortable.

“The first time I became human I was with Dean, Sam, and Bobby. The second time I was alone. I traveled for days on foot to reach Dean and Sam, hunted the whole time by angels who are… not unjustifiably angry with me for their expulsion from Heaven. When Dean and Sam finally found me, I was at the mercy of an angelic assassin and if it wasn’t for their intervention I would have died.” His mouth twists. “Stayed dead. They took me back to the bunker with them.”

He fidgets with one of his french fries. Mary’s concentration sharpens - this is the part he doesn’t want to talk about.

“Dean came to me while I was in the bunker and explained that the angels after me would put everyone in danger, and - and asked me to leave.” His voice cracks a little and he hunches his shoulders defensively. “I understand his reasoning,” he continues, speaking quickly now. “My value lies in my angelic abilities, and without them I am a burden. If I was able to defend myself adequately or if I was better at blending in with human society the threat might not have been so dire, but as it is…” he trails off and shrugs helplessly. “I am… the risks outweigh the benefits, which were slight to begin with.”

Mary takes a careful breath and refuses to react for a count of ten. She’s well aware that despite Cas’s recounting she’s certainly missing out on details. Dean’s decision sounds harsh and cold-blooded to her, but there might very well be things she doesn’t understand. She can’t let her instinctive affection for her boys - or her learned affection for Cas - provoke her into making a rash response.

“There is also,” Cas says reluctantly, “what I speculate may have been happening.”

Mary frowns. “What do you mean?”

Cas abandons the mangles french fry and folds his hands. “There is a marked difference between Dean’s attitude before and after he asked me to leave. Beforehand he gave me no indication that he thought me dangerous. He expressed worry for my safety several times over the phone, and he and Sam expended a good deal of time and effort to find me and bring me back to the bunker. He once said to me, ‘I’ll take you, cursed or not.’” He smiles a little at the memory, then sobers, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but given our past interactions and the bond we share I think that he might not have found my troubles to be such a deterrent under normal circumstances.” 

“So what do you think changed?” Mary asks. “And where was Sam in all this?”

Cas levels one of his laser stares at her. “There is one thing that Dean holds above all else, and that is Sam. He will overcome any obstacle, endure any torture, and make any sacrifice if it will ensure Sam’s safety. I suspect that between bringing me back and asking me to leave he came to believe that I presented a genuine threat to Sam and he did what he had to do to remove that threat. I was too - I was not thinking about it at the time, but when I left the bunker he ensured that I did not see Sam. I wonder if Sam is even aware of the situation.”

Mary leans back in her chair, mind whirling. It’s a lot of information to assimilate. “And you think it’s the angels chasing you that have him worried?”

“It’s the most logical assumption,” Cas says. “I trust Dean. I trust that he has reasons for what he does, even if I don’t understand them. He has consistently surprised me in the past.”

“But you ward yourself,” Mary says. “I’ve seen the tattoos. And you know how to ward buildings as well.”

“The wardings are not infallible,” Cas says tiredly.

“And why didn’t he just tell you?”

“Why _would_ he?” Cas asks wretchedly. “What can I possibly do? Now that I am powerless, it’s possible that it would only put me in danger as well, or increase the danger to Sam.” He sighs. “I choose to believe that Dean still hopes for my wellbeing, inasmuch as he is able to spare the attention.”

“But…” Mary gestures helplessly. Cas’s theory does make a sort of sense, even if it’s mostly based on speculation, and it’s definitely nicer to believe that Dean is trying to protect Sammy than it is to believe that he cast Cas aside the instant he was no longer useful. “He just made you leave? Just like that?”

“It was not as harsh as it sounds,” Cas assures her. “He gave me supplies and a spare phone and a lot of advice about where to go and who to trust. He sent me off with as much aid as he could possibly spare.”

Mary frowns. “You didn’t have any of that when we met.”

“No. Much of it was taken from me as I traveled.” He rubs his cheekbone; Mary remembers seeing a yellowing bruise there when they first met. “I destroyed the phone shortly after I left, partly due to high emotion but partly also in the fear that it could be used to find Dean and Sam.”

“You were angry.” It’s pretty understandable. He must have been scared, too.

“Hurt,” Cas corrects her softly. “I tried to be angry. It didn’t work.”

Mary nods, folding her arms across her chest and trying to think. It hadn’t occurred to her that Dean and Sammy might also be in the center of some intrigue and she’d been so wrapped up in her own problems that she’d never bothered to question Cas more about the state of his friendship with them. Now she’s got her boys on one side, possibly in danger, and Cas on the other, also in danger and without any kind of backup.

She leans her chin against her hand, thinking hard. Every time she feels like she’s got a handle on the situation and what she needs to do next, everything shifts. Of course her boys take precedence - she’s their _mother_ , for God’s sake, and protecting them will always be her first priority - but the idea of leaving Cas alone to fend for himself is repellent. Whose danger is more immediate and how much of a threat is Cas’s situation actually? Is there a way she balance the two and not abandon anybody?

This is really starting to piss her off.

Cas shifts across from her, breaking her concentration.

“I must urinate,” he says stiffly.

“Uh,” Mary says. “Right. Go ahead.”

Her best bet is probably to try and find out more information from Dean about the danger they’re facing. If it’s something he can tell her without endangering her, there might be a way in which they can protect Cas either remotely or in the bunker itself. If what Sam said about the bunker’s resources was right - and given what her parents have said, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be impressive - it’s entirely possible that there’s something there they can use.

Of course, if Cas is correct and Dean does genuinely worry about his wellbeing, then Dean would have already thought of that and may have already exhausted the bunker’s references. And if Cas and her boys have such a history together, it’s going to have to occur to the angels at some point that they might be able to use Dean and Sam to force Cas out into the open, in which case separation really would be the safest for everyone involved.

She sighs. It would be helpful to run through all this out loud, but Cas is -

Taking a really long time in the bathroom, now that she thinks about it. She turns to look.

The bathroom, which is located conveniently near the restaurant’s exit.

“ _Dammit,”_ Mary mutters, tossing cash down on the table and scrambling to her feet. “Dammit, dammit, _dammit_ , Cas, you self-sacrificing -”

She’s so intent on getting to the door that she runs right into a man in a grey suit as she stands up. There’s an awkward moment where she nearly loses her balance and tries not to grab the stranger for support, and then his hand closes down on her arm, hard.

“It _is_ you!” He says, his face alight with with something beatific. Rapturous. “We have found you!”

She’s seen that expression before. It was on the faces of the angels in the warehouse when they realised she’d woken up. _Not good._

She twists her arm frantically, but the man’s grip tightens past the point of human strength, hard enough that she feels her bones creak. He turns towards a group of similarly suited people by the restaurant’s entrance, all heading towards her with purpose.

“It’s the Burning One!”

“Okay, that’s just tacky,” Mary says, and kicks him in the balls as hard as she can.

It forces him to take a half-step back, but that’s it. _Shit_.

“Don’t be frightened,” the angel says, his grip not lessening even a little. “We have been searching for you.”

“Yeah?” Mary says. “Why?”

He smiles gently. “All will be revealed in time.” He brushes the side of her face with one hand. “You have an important role to play.”

“Super creepy!” Mary informs him brightly, and then gives her best girly shriek. “No! Stop! I don’t want to go with you!”

That gets the attention of the other patrons, at last. A woman a few tables over gets up and says “Hey! Leave her alone!” A big guy in a sweatshirt steps forward. “She said she didn’t want -”

One of the other angels, a woman, turns and plants her hand in the center of the big guy’s chest. He goes flying, hitting the far wall with a crack, and when he slides to the floor his eyes are open and unseeing.

Mary stares in shock at the dead man as chaos erupts around her. Some patrons run for the front door, get a little too close to the angels, and are interpreted as threats and dealt with accordingly. The rest take the hint and make for the back.

“Why, why did you do that?” Mary asks numbly.

The angel gives her that horrible serene smile again. “You’re far too valuable to be left amongst these mud-monkeys.”

Mary throws herself to the side as hard as possible. The angel’s grip on her arm doesn’t slip at all and a spike of pain lances all the way up to her shoulder but she manages to grab the edge of the nearest table and yank it closer, scrabbling blindly amongst the debris for a weapon.

Her fingers close on the handle of a fork. Good enough.

She buries it in the angel’s jugular. He gives her an exasperated look and pulls it back out.

There’s a crash of breaking glass, a flash of light, and all the attention in the room turns to Cas and his bloody silver sword, standing over the motionless body of one of the angels.

“ _You,”_ one of them hisses venemously. “You _abomination_ , you dare to intervene?”

“Yes,” Cas says evenly.

The angel swings at Cas and Cas ducks, spinning fluidly under her arm and around behind her. The sword flashes out, catching the angel across the side. It’s not a killing blow but the angel flinches back, blue light seeping from the tear in her suit jacket. A second angel sets upon Cas before he can follow through and he’s forced to dodge to the side.

Mary uses the confusion to attack her captor again, using anything she can think of to hit him or try to twist away. He’s starting to look annoyed, which is something.

“Stop fighting me!” He snaps as she throws all her strength behind smashing a hard plastic restaurant cup into his face. “This is for the greater g-”

Cas interrupts the conversation by being thrown across the room and into them, finally breaking the angel’s hold on Mary’s arm. There’s a confused moment where Mary and Cas both hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and the angel stumbles and falls against the busboy’s station. 

Cas presses something into Mary’s hand and then rolls to his feet, sprinting back into the fray.

Mary looks down. It’s a knife, one of the mostly-dull but serrated aluminum ones that cheap restaurants hand out to cut steak.

Her captor glances over at her, clearly torn between killing Cas and making sure she can’t run. She shrinks back, tucking herself under the table and trying to look as cowed and frightened as possible. The angel turns away and launches himself at Cas.

Mary slashes herself across the palm of her hand and scoops up blood with her fingers, feverishly trying to remember the sigil she’d seen Cas use in the warehouse all those long days ago. She’d gotten a pretty good look at it, but she hadn’t tried to memorize it or anything. There had been a circle, right, with a symbol inside, and then a few squiggles and a little triangle thing on the top, and a few things that looked like ‘N’s…

She finishes the drawing. Nothing happens. “Activate! Banish! _Work,_ dammit!”

Frantic, she looks for Cas. He’s just barely managing to avoid being mobbed, but he hasn’t incapacitated any more angels. He’s not going to last long.

“Cas!”

One of the angels gets in a lucky hit and tosses him against the counter. He hits the ground hard and twists, catching her eye through the shifting screen of suit-clad legs.

“Your hand!” He slaps the ground.

Mary copies the motion, slapping her bloody palm down on the center of the sigil. There’s a blinding flash of light and when it clears the angels are gone.

There’s no time to be pleased with herself. This fight will have drawn a lot of attention - human law enforcement attention - and there’s no telling how long the banishment will hold. Mary scrambles to her feet, pausing only to scoop up the silver sword that had belonged to the angel Cas killed, and hurries over to the counter. Cas looks groggy but mostly unharmed, and anything more in-depth will have to wait for later.

She slings his arm over her shoulders and hauls him up, making for the kitchen and - hopefully - the back door.

The kitchen is deserted - the employees drawn out by the fight and then probably chased out of the restaurant entirely. Mary edges them between grills and prep tables and out the back. There’s a group of people clustered in the parking lot, but their attention is all on the front of the restaurant. They’re easy to slip by.

They split up as they reach the car, Cas going to the passenger side without protest. Mary guns the engine and pulls out, more concerned with getting as much distance between them and the restaurant than she is about traffic safety or what direction she’s heading. She drives until they’ve left the town, blood running from her injured hand down the steering wheel to drip into her lap. She ignores it. In the passenger seat Cas winces as they hit bumps but doesn’t make a sound.

She pulls off the moment she sees a stand of trees and bushes big enough to hide the car. For a moment they both sit there in silence, letting the adrenaline ebb. Mary remembers the sound of the man who’d tried to help her hitting the wall and swallows back bile.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Cas, are you hurt?”

“It will heal,” Cas says. He has one arm wrapped around his ribs and there’s blood running down his face from a cut near his hairline, but his voice is steady and his eyes are clear and alert.

She nods and gets the first aid kit. She opens Cas’s door and has him turn to face her, kneeling down herself in the dirt beside the car. He bandages her hand first, grip steady despite what must be a pounding headache, and then she takes care of the cut on his head. A quick examination of his ribs reveals that they’re probably just bruised or cracked, not fully broken.

She sits back on her heels. There’s an impressive hand-shaped bruise already starting to deepen from angry red into blue-black on her arm.

“We’re in the same boat, aren’t we?” she says quietly.

“I suspect so,” Cas says gently. 

Mary nods. “We’d better call the boys.” She pulls the phone out of her back pocket, not bothering to get up. She’s too tired and too heartsick for agitated pacing, and this way Cas will be able to listen in too.

Dean answers with “Hi, Mom, you almost here?”

“Dean,” Mary says steadily. “Go get your brother and then put me on speaker phone.”

“Did something happen?” Dean demands.

“Do as I say, please.”

She waits while he yells for Sammy, the sound from the phone going hollow and echoey as he switches on the speaker. Guess they still haven’t perfected that in the future.

“All right, what’s wrong?” Dean asks.

“We ran into a little angel trouble,” Mary says. Cas leans over so he can easily hear both sides of the conversation, wincing slightly as the movement puts pressure on his ribs. “We’re both fine but we’re not going to make it to the bunker. I’m sorry.”

“We can come get you -” Dean starts.

“Maybe we know someone in the area -” Sam interrupts.

“You misunderstand me, kiddos,” Mary says as gently as she can when she mostly just wants to scream and hit something. “We didn’t get much information out of them, but they definitely want me for something and they’re going to be looking for me pretty hard. Until we know what it is, it’s too dangerous for me to be anywhere near you.”

“The bunker is really well warded, Mom,” Sam says. “Bring Cas. The four of us can definitely - and we have other friends, we can call in some favors -”

“ _I will not put you in danger,”_ Mary says harshly. “Do you understand, Sammy? I don’t know what they’re planning, but they went through the trouble to bring me back from the _dead_ so it’s got to be big. They’re not going to stop at much. If it’s too dangerous for Cas to be with you, it’s definitely too dangerous for me.”

“No,” Sam says. “No, we’ll figure something out, we just have to -”

“She’s right, Sam,” Dean says thickly.

“What? Are you insane? First Cas and now -”

“I said she was right, Sam, now shut up!”

“No, I _won’t_ , this is stupid -”

“Drop it!”

“- we just got her _back_ -”

“I said drop it!”

“ _Boys,”_ Mary snaps, and they both fall silent. “Please. I don’t want to be away from you, I truly don’t. Please don’t make this harder.”

“Sorry, Mom,” Sammy says, subdued. “But -”

“We’ll look into it,” Dean interrupts. “We’ll shake down some of our contacts, see if we can figure out what the wingless dicks are up to.”

“No,” Mary says firmly. “That will put you on their radar just as much as being near me will. I want you as far away from this as possible, do you understand me, Dean?”

“We will handle Heaven,” Cas says. “You handle Hell.”

Mary gives him a sharp look - she doesn’t like the sound of ‘handling Hell’ - but Dean sighs and says “Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.”

“Sammy?” Mary asks.

“I don’t like it,” Sam says stubbornly. “I don’t. I think we’ll be better off together. But I can see the sense of not drawing any more attention than we have to, so, fine. We’ll handle Hell. We’ve got Crowley in the basement anyway, we might as well use him. Get this over with fast.”

Mary breathes out. Dean and Sam are adults. They’ve already survived more than she ever would have wanted, or thought possible. “Be careful. Do you hear me? You be careful and you watch each other’s backs. And if you need me, you call. I’m your mother, there is nothing and no one that can keep me from you if you’re in trouble.”

“Okay,” Sam says in a small voice. 

“Yes, Mom,” Dean rasps. “You call us, too, okay?”

“I will. I love you both, so much.” She cuts herself off fast, before her voice can break.

“We love you too,” Sam says. “Be careful.”

The phone goes dead. Mary leans forward until her forehead is resting against Cas’s knee. After a brief pause she feels his hand rest lightly on her hair. 

She allows herself a moment of comfort, and then she straightens up and wipes her face.

“Put the first aid kit away. We’ve got work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy, people spent a lot of time talking in this chapter! Sorry about that. Also, sorry for continuing the separation. I have reasons for it, I promise! They aren’t even evil reasons.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Mary’s potty mouth. Mary finding out about the Cupids’ role in her marriage, which might zing people with consent-related sensitivities. Also, this chapter takes place at the same time as 9x08 ‘Rock and a Hard Place’ and spoils it in a mild, sensitive, hypoallergenic way. You have been warned.  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: (all together now) Driving routes! All baby facts come from careful authorial observation of my nephews, because you never know when you might need it for a fic.  
> NEW TAGS: Missouri Mosely  
> NOTES: Sorry this took so long! I blame a combination of American Thanksgiving and having to rewrite most of this chapter after the midseason finale. ;-P

Mary drives.

At first she’s just trying to put some distance between them and the restaurant, but as the miles go by and the scenery changes from small town to farmland to town again she realises that she can’t stop. She should swap out the car for something else, she’s going to need to get gas eventually, and she should probably see if Cas is hungry or thirsty. But her hands are clenched so tightly around the steering wheel that her fingers are numb and it feels like going forward is the only thing keeping her from flying in a million different directions at once, so she keeps driving.

When it starts to get dark, Cas takes a deep breath as if he’s about to say something, and then falls silent. She can feel the weight of his gaze on the side of her face. It’s the first time all afternoon he’s done anything to draw attention to himself and she knows she should acknowledge it, but she keeps her eyes resolutely focused out the front windshield. She’s been gritting her teeth so hard that her neck is starting to feel stiff.

Cas takes another breath, a little bit shallower than the first, and Mary feels the simmering rage inside her reach a boiling point.

“Something you want to say, Cas?”

Cas watches her for a moment. “No,” he says finally.

It’s the tentative tone he uses, of all things, that tips her over the edge. Cas wants to talk? Fine. Mary would love to talk. Mary has nothing to do but talk, since she doesn’t know what’s going on and she can’t get to her children and she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to _do_.

She swerves onto the shoulder and slams on the brakes. Cas makes a pained noise as his seatbelt tightens suddenly against his bruised ribs.

Mary rests her forehead against the steering wheel. She’s still furious enough to bite it in half, but now she feels guilty too. She reaches over blindly and fumbles for Cas’s shoulder, giving it an apologetic squeeze.

“Just, just give me a minute, Cas. Just hang on for a minute.”

She gets out of the car, hops the guardrail, and walks briskly into the field. It would be ideal if there was a tree she could beat the shit out of with a branch or something, but all she can see is scrubby pastureland.

She stumbles over a rock.

“God _fucking dammit!”_ she howls. She picks it up and throws it with all her might, then grabs a second and a third.

She keeps going until she runs out of rocks and just stands there, hands fisted in her hair, panting. Her shoulder aches a little - it’s been a long time since varsity softball. She feels marginally calmer, though, so she untangles her fingers and trudges back to the car. 

Cas is hovering uncertainly by the guardrail. He makes an aborted gesture as Mary climbs back over, as if he wants to give her a hand but wants even more to not make her angrier, and retreats a few steps back towards the car.

Mary follows him, leaning back against the car’s side. After a moment he carefully copies her pose, shooting her a sidelong look.

“Cas, I owe you an apology. Are your ribs okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cas says.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” She tips her head back, staring up at the stars. It’s a little cloudy tonight, so they vanish and reappear under sweeps of dark gray shadow. It’s really tempting to try to make some kind of metaphor out of it. 

She counts her breaths, feeling the sharp edge of rage blunt a tiny bit.

“Protecting someone you care for by leaving them is difficult to bear, especially if you know they may still be in danger,” Cas says. Mary turns to look at him in surprise. He keeps his gaze fixed on the ground. “Usually I can still hear Dean when he prays to me and that gives me an idea of how he fares.” He closes his eyes. “I miss that very much.”

“You could hear him when he prayed to you?” Mary asks, caught between the remnants of her anger and fascination with a bit of insight into Cas’s existence as an angel.

“Yes.” Cas sighs. “There were many times when I wasn’t certain he was aware that he was doing it. It had become habit for him, I think. ‘Cas, I hope you’re okay. Give me a sign. If you’re in trouble, I’ll find you.’ But often he was angry. ‘Cas, you son of a bitch, this is all your fault, where the hell are you, get your feathery butt back here.’”

It’s pretty weird to hear what she has no doubt are Dean’s exact words delivered in Cas’s default monotone. She’s fairly certain that’s the first time Cas has ever used the phrase ‘feathery butt’, for one.

“I can still hear the angels sometimes,” Cas says dully. “I find that I would prefer to be able to hear Dean.” He gives her a strained little half-smile. “I’m sorry to take you away from them as well.”

Mary has to look away. It isn’t Cas’s fault. “You didn’t, Cas.”

He falls silent, and after a moment Mary turns her attention back to the stars. She never learned that much about stargazing. She can find the North Star and pick out some of the easier constellations, but that’s about it. It was never important.

As she watches, Orion disappears until a sweep of cloud cover. She leans sideways until her shoulder is pressed up against Cas’s. “I don’t really know what to do next.”

He shrugs. “That will make us very hard to predict.”

Mary gives a strangled laugh. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Look - let’s find somewhere to stay for the night. We can think about it in the morning.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They end up sleeping in the car. It’s too late and Mary’s gotten them too lost for finding a motel to be anything more than a hassle. In deference to Cas’s bruises and against his protests, Mary makes him take the back seat and folds herself into the front.

“Dean told me to be a gentleman,” Cas argues as Mary seriously considers physically forcing him into the backseat.

“That’s sweet, if a little condescending,” Mary says. “I promise that I’ll let you know if you’re being inappropriate, does that help?”

It helps enough to get him as stretched out as possible in the back, although he insists that she take the spare blanket from the trunk.

It’s not a great night’s sleep, but it could be worse. The weather is reasonably mild, considering the latitude and the time of year, and there’s something comforting about hearing your companion breathing nearby every time you wake up. When the boys had been little and John hadn’t been home, sometimes Mary would carry Sammy into Dean’s room and spend the night with them. Dean had woken up once and, rather than being curious about why his mother was napping on his bedroom floor, had sleepily offered to let Sammy share his bed. 

If what Cas says about her sons’ relationship now is accurate, it’s an instinct he’s never grown out of. Mary can’t help but be glad for it.

In the backseat Cas breathes in suddenly, like he’s surprised to be awake. Mary waits for him to lever himself upright and blink owlishly out the window before giving him a good morning.

They drive until they find a town, a tiny huddle of buildings in the middle of farmland that fortunately includes a gas station. Mary sends Cas into the miniscule convenience store to find something that will pass for breakfast and spreads the roadmap out on the hood of the car to try and figure out where they are.

Cas comes out just as Mary locates them in southern Oklahoma, near the border with Texas. He unpacks his plastic bag as she folds up the map, handing her a bottle of cold coffee (why would anyone make that a thing, and why does it have that much sugar?), an assortment of packaged pastries, and then, matter-of-factly, a box of condoms.

“The attendant said we would probably need those,” he says.

Mary hastily shoves the box back into the plastic bag and out of sight. “What? Why?”

Cas frowns. “I don’t know. He looked out into the parking lot and whistled and asked if you were with me, and when I said yes he laughed and said it figured and gave them to me.”

Mary takes a moment to re-evaluate their appearance - worn out, rumpled, and Cas has got some spectacular bedhead going on. She reaches up self-consciously to check her own. Between the night in the car and her fit of anger out in the field, it’s pretty damn messy.

Oh God. It probably looks like they’ve got sex hair.

“Cas,” Mary says firmly. “We will never need condoms. And from now on, if anyone asks, you should probably say I’m your sister.” There is enough crazy crap going on in their lives without adding a hook-up with her sons’ friend the ex-angel to the mix. Just… no. A whole world of no. She hasn’t even _started_ trying to sort through the loss of John.

Cas nods, unconcerned. “Okay. Would you prefer the Koffee Kake or the Snowball? There’s also something called a Devil Dog. I assume that’s intended to be humorous.”

“Koffee Kake,” Mary chokes. “But first let me tidy us up a bit.”

Cas mostly ignores her in favor of the Snowball as she parts and combs his hair. Mary’s not sure if it’s the taste or the pink coconut that has him looking so utterly perplexed, but he does eat the whole thing.

She washes down the Koffee Kake with sips of cold coffee in between tying back her own hair. They split the Devil Dog.

“All right,” Mary says when they’re more or less fed and presentable, “I wouldn’t say I’ve got a plan exactly, but there’s something my mom always used to say when she had a big problem to solve: what do you have, and what do you need? So, first we need to figure out what we have.”

Cas cocks his head to the side. “We have two angel blades, one shotgun, one pistol, one iron knife, three bags of salt, four bottles of lighter fluid, a car, nine short-sleeved shirts, thirteen long-sleeved -”

“Just ‘clothes’ is fine, Cas. Thank you.”

“ _Clothes_ ,” Cas corrects carefully, “allies - albeit ones that cannot fight with us - and two false Indiana police badges. Oh, and a false FBI ID card.”

“Wait, where did we get that?” Mary asks, momentarily derailed.

“Dean gave it to me several years ago,” Cas says. “I kept it.” He fishes it out of an inner pocket and flips it open for inspection. It’s upside-down, but it looks to be in pretty good condition considering how long he’s had it and how much he’s probably been through.

“So what we’ve got is the basics,” Mary muses. She also has a green plastic army man in one pocket and a matchbox car in the other, but she’s refusing to think about that right now. “What we need is information, allies who will actually be useful to us, and a better way to fight angels.” She gives Cas a considering look. “The last one’s pretty easy to fix, anyway. You can teach me how to fight with an angel sword, and I can teach you how to fight as a human. It’ll be good practice.”

Cas frowns a little, then concedes this point. “I’m unused to fighting without my full strength.”

“Fortunately for you, I’m very used to fighting people who are bigger and stronger than I am,” Mary says dryly. “Okay, I think information is our most pressing need right now.”

“Do you have any hunter contacts that might be helpful?”

Mary shakes her head regretfully. “After all this time it would be pretty hard to track them down. I cut ties to the community after my parents died, and hunters don’t tend to stay in one place for very long unless they’re semi-retired, like my parents, or more on the information side of things. The info guys usually need to keep a stable base so they can store their resources.”

“Bobby was such a one,” Cas says, nodding.

“Unfortunately, most of them tend to be older. Thirty years later, I doubt many of them are left.” Mary absently finishes off the last of her terrible cold coffee (seriously, why was that much sugar necessary?), deep in thought. 

“I could try to find a sympathetic angel,” Cas offers.

Mary blinks, startled. “Do you think there is one? I thought they were all trying to kill you. Or kidnap me.”

Cas stares pensively at the detritus of their breakfast. “Thus far those do seem to be the predominant factions, but I know the angel Ezekiel helped Dean and Sam shortly after the Fall. If there is one, there may very well be others.” He hesitates. “I do, also, feel a need to be of aid to those I can. This is very frightening for them and I am… complicit.”

It’s a tempting thought. A supernaturally powerful ally, and one with an inside scoop, would be a massive help. Reluctantly, Mary shakes her head. “I think it’s too risky, Cas. We can keep it in reserve, though.”

Cas looks disappointed, but he doesn’t fight her on it. Mary frowns. Now that she thinks about it, someone with a supernatural link would be an excellent option.

“After my parents died,” Mary says slowly, “even though I cut myself off from hunting, I tried to keep an eye on anything supernatural going on in my neighborhood. There was a psychic in Lawrence who seemed to be the real deal. She would need to keep a client base, so there’s a chance she’s still there. It’s worth a shot.”

Cas nods. “Agreed.”

Mary makes a face. “Of course, it means basically driving us right back the way we came. Sorry about that, Cas.”

Cas shrugs. “As long as we don’t get near the bunker, I don’t think it should be a problem.”

“Actually, I mostly meant ‘sorry for driving you seven hours out of the way because I lost my temper’, but thanks anyway,” Mary says sheepishly.

Cas just smiles. “I enjoy looking out the window.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They stop for lunch just over the border into Kansas. They avoid sit-down restaurants, not wishing to repeat the fiasco in Lebanon, but the food is still a long sight better than breakfast.

Once they’re done, Mary steps away to call her boys. She gets Dean’s answering machine, but Sammy picks up on the second ring.

“Mom, is everything okay?”

Despite the emotional turmoil of the last few days, hearing his voice makes her smile. “Everything’s fine, sweetheart. I was just calling to check in.”

“Oh!” Sam says, surprised. “Um, thanks. We’re fine. We’re helping a friend of ours with a case in South Dakota right now.”

“Anything interesting?” Mary asks. From what Cas has said Dean and Sam are good at what they do, but she still has trouble imagining it. “We stopped for lunch, so I’ve got some time before we have to get back on the road.”

“Dragon, we think,” Sam says with way more nonchalance than his statement warrants. “Preying on a born-again group at the local church, but it’s okay - we kept what was left of the sword. Hey, Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Uh, sure, honey,” Mary says, mind still firmly snagged on ‘dragon’, _what the hell_. 

“Jody, she said something about how religion was comforting even with everything she’s learned about hunting. And Dean said you used to tell him angels were watching over him, and it just made me think - how are you doing with all this? The angel stuff?”

Mary sighs - this is the kind of conversation she’d be a lot more comfortable having in person, and possibly with some alcohol. “To be honest, sweetie, I haven’t really had time to think about it with everything else that’s going on.” Survival first, after all, and a crisis about the nature of good and evil is definitely on the back burner. “I was never that interested in the religious aspect, really. I just liked the idea of a greater good watching out for you boys when I couldn’t.”

“Oh,” Sam says in a small voice, and Mary winces. That particular concept had failed spectacularly.

“So,” she says, forcing her voice to be light and teasing, “Jody, hmm? Is that your ‘friend’?”

“What?” Sam says, startled. “ _No._ I mean, yes, she’s my friend. Our friend! She’s our friend. She’s our mutual friend and not, you know, my _special_ friend or anything.”

Mary cackles. She’d really been looking forward to when her boys would be old enough to embarrass.

“Shut up,” Sam says, laughing. “Oh my God. Okay, I have to get back to the dragon hunt now.”

“Well, be careful,” Mary says. “And watch out for your brother.”

“Will do. Tell Cas I said hi.”

She hangs up, still smiling a little. The conversation with Sam has gone a long way towards lightening her mood, and there’s an extra spring in her step when she rejoins Cas at the rest stop’s splintery picnic table where he’s methodically tidying up their trash. “Sam says hi.”

Cas nods. “And Dean, did Dean say anything?” His expression is neutral, but Mary doesn’t miss the hesitation in his voice.

“I left him a message.” She watches him carefully. “You’re pretty close to Dean, huh?”

“Yes.”

She waits him out. After a moment he shifts uncomfortably and says, “He’s my friend.”

“You know that any time you want to talk to either of them you can use the phone, right? It’s not just mine.” It’s reasonable for Cas to be skittish around them after having to leave the bunker, of course, and it’s absolutely his right to have issues about it. At the same time, he’s obviously still fond of them and misses them terribly.

There’s enough about her life right now that she can’t do anything about. Maybe she can at least help with this a little. 

“Conversation is not necessary,” Cas says stiffly.

Mary’s phone buzzes against the table’s hard surface, and they nearly crack heads trying to look at it at the same time. Mary gives Cas a knowing look, and he flushes slightly.

“Dean says, ‘in sd on case. all ok. ttyl.’” Mary reads. “Whatever that means. And then there’s some random punctuation.”

Cas squints at it. “Well, the buttons are very small. It’s understandable to mistype.”

Mary holds out the phone. “Why don’t you write him back while I throw out the trash?”

“I will throw the trash out,” Cas says, standing abruptly. 

That’s enough pushing for the moment, apparently. “Okay, Cas. Let’s get back on the road.”

They make it to Lawrence at about six, which is a little too late to drop in on a stranger, and in any case after two days on the road and a night spent in the car they’re not exactly fit for company. They find a motel and take turns in the shower, which has lousy pressure but blissfully hot water. The rest of the evening is spent channel surfing and attempting to interpret what they come across. Cas does best with documentaries and cartoons, while Mary finds the news programs alternately illuminating and horrifying. They both agree that sports are boring and the musical set in a high school is just plain weird, and Mary has to reassure Cas that breaking into song at the drop of a hat isn’t actually how education works. Probably. It wasn’t in the early eighties, at least.

They wake early the next morning and loiter around the room until the public library opens. The building hasn’t changed much since the last time Mary was here, which is reassuring; the book displays are all different, of course, and the microfilm station has been replaced with a table of computers, but the circulation and reference desks are in the same place and the glorious smell of aging paper still wraps around her as soon as she enters. 

Mary nudges Cas. “Why don’t you go up to the desk and ask them if they have a yellow pages?”

Cas gives her a startled look. “Me?”

“Sure.” Mary smiles at him reassuringly. “You can handle it, Cas, it’ll be fine.”

Cas eyes the desk in much the same way that a man might size up a dangerous animal or a screaming horde of vengeful angels and shoots her a pleading look.

“Tell you what,” Mary says. “Pretend I’m the librarian and ask me for the phone book.”

Cas looks dubious, but obediently turns to face her and says, “Give me the phone book.” After a moment, he adds “Please.”

“That’s good, that’s very direct,” Mary says. “Try it again, a little more gently this time.”

Cas considers this. “I would like to have the phone book, please.”

“Okay, that’s great,” Mary says, rubbing his arm reassuringly. “Now go ask her, just like that.”

Cas squares his shoulders and advances towards the desk. Mary watches carefully as the librarian and Cas talk and then the librarian points Cas towards a large volume tethered to the end of the desk.

Mary goes over to join him. Cas points to the book. “This is the phone book.”

Mary grins. “Good job, Cas.”

Cas gives her a shy smile. “What are we supposed to do with it?”

Mary finds Missouri Mosely listed under the section for psychics and sends Cas to the librarian for scrap paper and a pencil so she can copy down the address. It’s late enough in the morning now that going straight over from the library wouldn’t be unreasonable, and it’s close enough to walk so they leave the car in the parking lot.

Mary hesitates for just a moment as they turn onto the street. Ms. Mosely’s house is four blocks to the right.

Her old home is to the left. It’s both tempting and horrifying to contemplate. How much of it is even still there? She only has vague memories of it, but Dean had confirmed that she’d stayed in the house as a spirit afterwards. It couldn’t have been completely destroyed.

“Are we in need of directions?” Cas asks.

“No,” Mary says, shaking off her indecision. “I know where to go. Turn right.”

The walk over is quiet. Mary spends most of it trying not to pay too much attention to the neighborhood and wishing they’d driven instead so she’d have less of a chance to be distracted. It’s been thirty years, but what if someone recognizes her? Of course they wouldn’t actually think it _was_ her, but what if she sees someone she knows? Can angels listen in on that kind of thing?

No. It will be fine. 

They reach the house without mishap, although Mary is tense and Cas is watching his surroundings in a way that screams ‘soldier waiting for attack’. It’s a nice house, tidy and well-kept. Mary rings the doorbell before she can lose her nerve.

The door opens almost immediately. Ms. Mosely takes one look at them and her jaw drops. “My _lord_.”

“I guess you probably have an idea of why we came,” Mary says, smiling hopefully.

“Yes, I certainly do,” Ms. Mosely says, wincing and pressing one hand to her head. “Just call me Missouri, baby, the ‘Ms’ isn’t necessary.” She looks over at Cas and scowls. “Button down, boy, you are giving me a migraine.”

Cas shifts, abashed, and the lines of pain on Missouri’s face ease a bit. “Well, you’d better come on in. I can see that this one’s going to take a while.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Missouri directs them to sit down in the living room and appears a moment later with three glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. As soon as she sees it Mary’s mouth starts to water. Missouri gives her an amused look.

“Well!” She says when the lemonade has been distributed and the pitcher safely placed on the coffee table. “My goodness. Mary, it is lovely to see you alive, honey, although I can see it hasn’t been easy.”

Mary smiles faintly - that dichotomy sums up her existence pretty well right now.

“All right.” Missouri folds her hands in her lap and looks at them expectantly. “What question would you like to tackle first?”

“We need to know why Mary was brought back,” Castiel says immediately, clutching his lemonade glass in both hands. “Any information about the angels would also be welcome. Please.”

Missouri hums thoughtfully. “I can’t do too much about the angels,” she says finally. “I can’t pull information out of thin air, I can only deal with what I have available to me, and that’s the two of you. Castiel, you’re too removed from the rest of them for me to pick anything up. I’m sorry.” 

Cas nods stiffly, his expression set. Mary’s not sure whether it’s the reminder of how human he is or the fact that he won’t be of use, but she makes a mental note to check in with him later. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Missouri nod approvingly.

“Mary… you’re only been back for a little bit, right? I might still be able to follow the spell that was used on you back to the caster. It will be faint, but with a spell that powerful there should still be a trace.”

“Okay,” Mary says. “I mean, yes, that would be really helpful. What do you need me to do?”

Missouri smiles, doubtless picking up on Mary’s nervousness. “Just sit there, baby, you won’t feel a thing. Castiel, your presence is too bright. I’m going to need you to go stand in the backyard for a little while.”

“Of course.” Cas stands up to go and then give his glass a confused look.

“You can take the lemonade with you,” Missouri says, definitely amused now. She sits with her head cocked until the back door opens and closes, and then moves over to sit next to Mary on the couch. “That boy’s aura is a _mess_ , poor thing - it can’t possibly be comfortable for him,” she says sympathetically. “All right, just be quiet for a moment. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

She takes Mary’s hand in one of hers, and then raises the other to cup Mary’s cheek. She closes her eyes.

Mary is immediately assailed by doubts. Should she try to blank her mind? Should she be doing something to let Missouri in? She’s probably breathing too loudly. And _God_ her back itches.

“Just breathe with me,” Missouri murmurs.

Mary closes her eyes and obediently tries to copy Missouri’s breathing pattern. Missouri’s hands are warm and very soft. It’s oddly comforting to sit here and just be touched; she feels cradled, protected, and as their breath syncs it strikes her how intimate it is to close her eyes like this in front of a virtual stranger.

“Good,” Missouri says softly. “Now think of where you woke up.”

The warehouse, of course. Mary casts her mind back to that confusing first day. She remembers the circle of bloody sigils around her and the corpse next to her. She knows now that it was a dead angel and the silver spike in its chest was an angel sword, but she remembers thinking it must have been a zombie or a revenant of some kind. She remembers the angels taking notice of her and Cas using their momentary distraction to banish them, even though he was sick and half-unconscious.

The memory warps slightly - she sees Cas striding into the warehouse as the ritual finishes, surprising the angels standing around the spell-circle. One of them shines more brightly than the others, so brightly that Mary wants to look away and it actually starts to hurt a little and the shine expands until all she can see are the vague shadows of something moving at the edges of her sight -

“Mary.”

Mary gasps and opens her eyes, shaken. Missouri squeezes her hand reassuringly.

“I’m sorry, baby. That was a little more intense than I was anticipating.”

Mary breathes carefully. “Did you find anything?”

Missouri grimaces. “Possibly. Would you go get Castiel, please?”

Mary gets up, only a little wobbly on her feet, and finds the back door. Cas is standing rigidly in the center of the small backyard, eyes fixed on the house. He’s still carefully holding his lemonade glass in both hands and for a moment he reminds her of a church votive statue or maybe one of the three kings from a nativity scene. It’s surreal and a little comical.

He catches sight of her and begins to walk forward, and the illusion is gone.

“Are you all right?” he asks, frowning.

“I’m fine,” Mary says, giving him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

Apparently it falls short, because he rubs her arm reassuringly and then scrutinizes her expression as if waiting for the comfort to take effect.

“Thanks, Cas,” Mary says, honestly touched by the attempt. “Come on, Missouri’s ready.”

“So,” Missouri says when they’re seated, “I only got a little bit of concrete information, but I saw enough to hopefully be able to give you some good questions to start asking.”

Mary and Cas nod. Having a direction to go in is certainly better than the aimless flailing they’ve been doing so far, even though it would be nicer to have all the answers handed to them on a plate.

Missouri gives Mary a sardonic look, and Mary smiles apologetically.

“The angel who was in charge of the spell was named Muriel,” Missouri continues. “I was only able to get a brief impression of her and I’m afraid her essence was too powerful for me to see her vessel, so I’m not sure what her physical appearance is. She’s scared, though. Whatever she’s planning, it’s out of fear. And despair.”

“Cas? Ring any bells?” Mary asks.

Cas frowns. “I know of her, but I don’t think we’ve ever met in person. She remained neutral during the wars in Heaven, which is something only the very powerful and the mostly powerless were able to do.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea which side she comes down on,” Mary says hopefully.

“Not all forms of power are readily apparent,” Cas says darkly.

Well. That’s spectacularly unreassuring. “Missouri, were you able to see anything else?”

Missouri considers this for a moment. “It’s not exactly something I saw,” she says finally. “It was more of an impression. It was gone so fast that I didn’t even get a real look at it, but… it reminded me of something. I think they’re reusing some old ideas.” She locks eyes with Cas. “This isn’t the first time a Winchester has been resurrected by angels.”

Cas straightens as if he’s been slapped.

“Oookay,” Mary says, eyeing them both. “Something’s going on here that I don’t understand, and I’m going to need one of you to explain it to me.”

“Angels can only take a vessel if they have consent and if the host is strong enough to contain them,” Missouri explains. “For really powerful angels the pool is even smaller.”

“It runs in bloodlines,” Cas says. “Michael was able to possess both John and Dean. When it looked like Dean was going to refuse to cooperate, the angels panicked and resurrected John’s illegitimate son Adam to use instead.”

“Wait, John’s what?” Mary asks, caught off guard.

“After you were dead, honey,” Missouri says, glaring at Cas, which… well, it’s good that John didn’t pine. And that he waited until after she was dead, she’s glad for that. Sometimes she had wondered - 

It isn’t important now. They’d had their rocky patches, suffice it to say.

“So, what are you saying, exactly?” Mary asks, forcing herself back on topic.

Missouri and Cas exchange a look. “For the Final Battle between Michael and Lucifer to take place, the angels needed two brothers, one rebellious and one obedient, to act as vessels. For that they needed Sam and Dean.”

“And for Sam and Dean they needed you and John,” Missouri says gently, and it’s the careful tone she uses that clues Mary in.

“Wait,” Mary says, laughing, “are you saying _angels_ got us together?” She’d loved John, but it had taken some doing. They’d started out hating each other. It had hardly been a match made in -

No.

“Yes,” Missouri says quietly.

All those things she’d done to save him, protect him, be with him. Lying. Making demon deals. She’d been ready to leave her family for him. She’d been ready to sell her _soul_. And it had all been - it hadn’t even been her idea? And maybe she would have come to the same place for a different boy, but she’d never had a _choice_.

She hadn’t even _liked_ him most of the time. 

Why does it still hurt that he’s gone?

“Well.” Mary says, voice strained. “Not gonna lie, that makes me feel a little violated.” As soon as she’s had some more time to think about, she’s pretty sure that ‘a little’ will change to ‘a lot, actually, screw you jerks’.

Cas hunches his shoulders miserably. “Heaven lost its way long before you were born, though the signs were not clear until later. For my part in the great plan, I am truly sorry.”

Mary stares. “ _You_ didn’t -”

“No, that part was the cupids,” Missouri reassures her. 

“Aha,” Mary says. Cupids do, she supposes, make for slightly more logical matchmakers than - well, than Cas, who might be one of the unlikeliest matchmakers she’s ever met.

She shakes her head. If she tries to keep thinking about Cupids, she really might lose touch with reality. What is it they’re supposed to be talking about? Right. Angels taking vessels.

“Okay. So, so the angels want me to be a vessel, like they wanted…” she trails off. The other boy had been directly related to John. John and Dean had been needed for Michael.

Sam had been needed for Lucifer.

“Cas,” she says, numb with horror, “at the restaurant, the angel called me ‘The Burning One’. But that’s not - it could be someone else, right? That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, it’s probably Lucifer,” Cas says. “He has experience fighting against Heaven and he would still be powerful even without Heaven’s backing. If the angels are to make war against Metatron he’s the logical choice, even if he is an abomination and condemned in God’s eyes.”

Mary swallows hard. Lucifer. _Lucifer_. God. They want her - they want her to help the devil wage war on Heaven? Even given what she’s been hearing about the disappointing nature of angels, this is the _actual devil_. Why would they ever think she would agree to that?

And oh, God - how are they planning to persuade her?

“ _Castiel_ , for a Heavenly being you don’t have the sense God gave a turtle,” Missouri says sharply.

Castiel looks confused, and then notices Mary’s stricken expression.

“Lying for comfort,” he mutters to himself, and then says more loudly, “But, but it’s true that you would be a suitable vessel for any of the most powerful angels. And ‘The Burning One’ is not a common epithet for Lucifer.”

Dean was right. He is a really terrible liar.

Mary’s expression must not change much, because Cas starts to look worried. “Lucifer is locked in the cage with Michael. Even if he is their endgame, it will be difficult if not impossible for them to release him. This is a move born of desperation, not logic.”

“Okay, so how many other powerful angels are left?” Missouri asks, reaching across to give Mary’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Mary grips back with desperate strength.

Cas shakes his head. “None, since the fall. Metatron has a vessel already, and in any case is not inherently powerful. Gabriel and Raphael are dead, Michael and Lucifer are trapped, and they were the only archangels left.” He glances over at her and falters a little. “But, but there are some that have gone missing over the years?”

“How many and how long ago?” Mary asks dully, voice muffled behind her hands.

“Not many, and before my own creation,” Cas admits. “Angelic tradition holds that God used them as the building blocks of the universe, thus allowing them to fulfill their original purpose as guardians of humanity.” His voice trails off.

“So,” Mary says into her fingers. “Lucifer it is. Great. I am actually Satan.”

“Well, no, he needs your consent first,” Cas says. “You will have to be vigilant. Lucifer is very devious and he may attack in any number of ways.”

“Silence is golden, Castiel,” Missouri says sharply. “Honey, how are you doing?”

Mary feels like she’s going to suffocate. She feels like she’s going to be crushed if she can’t get away. She can feel the pressure growing in her chest, the same itch that made her drag Cas on a ghost hunt and drive seven hours to Oklahoma for no reason. She needs to - she needs to do something or she’ll explode. _Anything._

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go off on your own right now,” Missouri says softly, “but I should have enough ingredients for pie.”

“Thank you,” Mary gasps, and flees for the kitchen.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary makes two apple pies before she runs out of fruit, and then finds ground beef and vegetables in Missouri’s refrigerator and makes a savory pie too. By the time she’s done the kitchen is a disaster and there’s a paring knife embedded in one of Missouri’s cutting boards.

She stands in the center of the kitchen, takes a moment to really absorb how many dishes she now has to do, and that one extra banal thing tips her over the edge completely. When Missouri comes in a moment later, she’s sitting on the floor sobbing into a dishtowel.

Missouri pulls a chair over and sits down, stroking her hair while she cries. She doesn’t say anything.

Mary leans over until she’s pressed up against Missouri’s leg. She wishes she was home right now. She wishes Dean was playing in the kitchen and Sammy was cooing in his playpen and John was - well, this is her fantasy and she doesn’t know what to think about John, so John isn’t home. It’s just the three of them and when the pie gets out of the oven she’ll cut a slice for Dean and mash some up for Sammy to get all over his face instead of in his mouth. She’ll cut some cheese for the top of her own and tease Dean about how gross it is. She’ll wash Sammy’s face while he squirms and Dean will climb into her lap and everything will be fine.

But no. Instead she has this: angelic factions, and the devil after her, and a life on the road hunting monsters. Children she can only speak to over the phone. And a ton of dishes.

“Castiel can do the dishes,” Missouri says, and it isn’t that funny but Mary laughs anyway. It’s a little bit hysterical.

“I’m sorry about the cutting board,” she sniffles.

“Better the cutting board than the cabinets,” Missouri says serenely. “Why don’t you go lie down for a bit? I’ll keep an eye on the pies.”

Mary nods and stumbles out into the living room. Cas is standing anxiously by the coffee table but he doesn’t try to speak to her or stop her as she collapses on the couch and closes her eyes. 

After a moment she feels him pull a blanket over her. She’s asleep before Missouri calls him into the kitchen.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By the time Mary wakes up it’s dark out. Cas is sitting on the coffee table with a plate of pie in his hands, staring at her intently. She groans.

“I am watching over you,” Cas says. “You are in no danger if you wish to sleep more.”

It’s tempting. It’s really tempting, even if having Cas stare at her is a little creepy. The plate of pie is more tempting, though, so Mary sits up and makes grabby hands at it.

Cas hands it over. It’s cold and half-congealed but it still tastes good, if she does say so herself.

“Other angels seem to have an easier time with humans,” Cas says suddenly. “I have… trouble with nuance, sometimes, if it’s connected to emotions instead of facts. I’m able to navigate angelic politics, which is no bed of roses, but humans…” he gestures helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

Mary sighs. “It wasn’t really your fault, Cas,” she says. “The bluntness didn’t help, but I know your heart was in the right place. You were just… thinking about it tactically.”

Cas nods, still looking a little lost. “I did the dishes.”

Mary dredges up a smile for him. “That’s good, Cas.”

“I broke one. Missouri said that for human reflexes that wasn’t bad, but I think she may have been trying to be kind.”

The smile feels a little more real this time. “No, one’s pretty good, Cas.” She does feel bad about the abuse Missouri’s kitchen has taken, though.

Cas fidgets. “Would you like more food? Or a beverage?”

“I’m fine,” Mary says. 

Cas’s shoulders slump. “I know, I know that this is not the situation you wished to be in,” he says heavily. “I know that I am not an ideal companion and that I am at least partly responsible for your current situation. Please just know that I will do everything in my power to be useful to you.”

Mary sets the plate down carefully on her lap and reaches over, hooking her hand around the back of his neck until he has to make eye contact. “Hey,” she says. “Do I wish my life was different? Yes. Do I wish I could be with my boys right now? Absolutely. But I’m glad you’re with me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cas echoes. He still looks a little lost, but his shoulders aren’t anywhere near as tense. Mary decides to take the win.

“Good.” She lets go and leans back. “So, where’s Missouri?”

“Reading in her room,” Cas says, taking the hint. “She said that breakfast will be ready at eight thirty and that if we even think about going back to the motel she’ll know about it and not be responsible for her actions.” 

Mary laughs a little. “Duly noted. Do you have somewhere to sleep?”

Cas nods. “There is a room for you also, to the right at the top of the stairs.”

“Thanks, Cas. You get to bed - I’m going to stay up for a bit.”

She leans back against the arm of the couch when he’s gone, letting her mind wander instead of trying to think about anything in particular. She feels empty, drained, like her emotions have reached a saturation point and simply no longer register. She doesn’t even feel embarrassed for breaking down in the kitchen. It’s a temporary state, she knows, but it’s kind of peaceful.

Eventually she gets up and wanders around the living room a bit. Missouri has a bookshelf in the corner and she drifts towards it, thinking that maybe a little reading will help her deal with her messed up sleep cycle. It’s mostly cookbooks and reference books, but the very top shelf is full of what looks like a series of novels.

Mary picks one at random and pulls it out. There are two improbably muscled men on the cover looking dramatic, and Mary grins. Romance novels! Who would have thought?

“Bloody Mary’ seems like a weird title for a romance novel, though. And who would call one ‘Wendigo’? That’s a pretty obscure legend, even in the hunting community. 

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she answers it absently, putting the book back on the shelf.

“Mom?”

“Hey, Sam,” Mary says. “I was going to call -” 

Then the shaky tone of his voice registers. “Sammy, is something wrong?”

She can hear him breathing unsteadily on the other end. “I’m - we’re, we’re fine. Uh, we’re okay. I was just, do you have a minute?”

“Of course, sweetie,” Mary says, sitting down on the arm of the nearest armchair. “What do you need?”

“I was just wondering,” he says, and pauses for so long that Mary almost thinks they’ve gotten disconnected. “I was just wondering, when I was a baby, was I… normal?”

He sounds terrified. Mary takes a careful breath before responding. “All moms think their babies are special, Sam. But yeah, you were pretty normal. Why do you ask?”

He blows out a breath - a sigh or an expression of relief, she’s not sure. “No, it’s just - you know how monsters try to mess with you sometimes? Get in your head? But I’m sure it’s nothing. I was just wondering.”

He doesn’t sound sure. He still sounds scared. And yes, she does know how about the psychological warfare part of hunting, and how it’s perpetrated by hunters and huntees alike, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously.

“Well, you were a little gassier than Dean,” she says. “But that’s not unusual for babies. Um… when you started teething you used to try to chew on my shirt, so I always had these wet splotches on my shoulder. Every morning when I came to wake you up you would give me the biggest smile. And gosh, you loved Dean. All he had to do was say your name and you’d stop crying.”

“I wish I remembered all that,” Sam says quietly.

“I wish there was more to remember,” Mary says regretfully. “I’m sorry, Sammy.”

Sam sighs. “Not much we can do about it now, right?” He clears his throat. “So. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh.” Mary switches mental tracks. “Well, we found out the name of the angel who resurrected me. Have you ever heard of a ‘Muriel’?”

“No,” Sam says. “I can look around the bunker, though, see if anything pops up in the lore.”

“Thanks, Sam, that would be great.” _Also Lucifer might want me for a vessel,_ she thinks, but the words get locked in her throat. It seems too ludicrous, too _dangerous_ to say it out loud. 

“That’s, that’s everything, I think.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Um, sorry I called so late at night. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, I was up,” Mary assures him. “Hey, tell your brother to call me next time instead of writing, will you? He keeps mistyping and I wind up with punctuation salad.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, I’ll tell him. Say hi to Cas for me.”

The phone goes dead in her hand, and she pushes it back into her pocket. The house suddenly seems too silent, the books no longer interesting, and her earlier detachment is fading. She wants to be able to comfort her son when he’s upset. She’d like to know what they even look like.

The lights are all off upstairs, but she can see Cas’s sweatshirt draped over the chair by the bed in the room across from hers. She slips in and sits down.

Cas sleeps like someone who isn’t sure what to do about it. Some nights he lies down on his back and folds his hands precisely over his stomach. Today he’s facedown with his head halfway under his pillow and both his arms out to the sides. He stirs as she sits and raises his head to look at her.

“I’m just… going to watch over you for a little while,” Mary whispers, feeling sheepish. It’s kind of weird, and she doesn’t really have a good excuse for it.

Cas just nods. “All right.” 

She closes her eyes and listens to him breathe as he falls back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the one hand, I specifically constructed Mary and Cas’s general arc to be flexible and as independent of Dean and Sam’s as possible because like everybody else I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the show. On the other hand - hooo boy, did that midseason finale force me to do a bunch of rewriting. A moment of silence, please, for all the scenes and bits of character development I now won’t get to include. *cues funeral dirge*
> 
> Also, as a PSA, between all the travel and forced social interactions of the holiday season (and one relative who had very poor timing-of-death) my writing time is going to be a little erratic for the next few weeks. Rest assured - I know where to go from here with the story and it shall indeed continue. Just, sporadically. ;D


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: some violence, some creative geography, use of consensus spelling for the [‘Rit Zien’](http://supernatural.wikia.com/wiki/Rit_Zien) (most unusual spelling award goes to IMDB with 'Aritizian'). Also Jody’s potty mouth and a discussion that might be triggering for anyone who’s lost a child.  
> SPOILERS: Refers to events in 09x05 ‘Rock and a Hard Place’ and borrows plot elements and a little bit of dialogue from 09x06 ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’.  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Driving routes, which for the first time thus far I then decided to ignore in favor of better story pacing. Gideon bibles, the lyrics to ‘Hey Jude’, and the history of the term ‘cockblock’. The location of Rexford, Idaho, which the internet was unable to find - apparently it should have been Rex _burg_.  
>  NEW TAGS: Jody Mills, Ephraim  
> NOTES: I’m sorry this chapter took so long! Family obligations *fistshake*. Barring catastrophe, the next chapter should be up before the series comes back on.

It’s surprisingly hard to leave Missouri’s house the next morning - not only because they’d felt so welcome there, but because it had been such a relief to have an ally. Cas and Mary both agree, though, that it’s too dangerous for them to remain and possibly bring angelic attention to her.

Missouri absorbs this information with raised eyebrows and an unimpressed expression, and says “Well, it’s more efficient to have us chasing down leads separately, I suppose.”

“Wait, what?” Mary says, alarmed.

Missouri crosses her arms. “This is my world too, you know, and I don’t take kindly to people who take advantage of my friends. You can bet your angelic sidekick I’m going to be doing some digging of my own.”

“But it will be -” Cas begins, but subsides when Mary gives him a look. She recognizes a fight she isn’t going to win.

“Keep in touch with us, at least.”

Missouri nods, mollified. “And you watch out for each other, you hear? Castiel, I wrapped up some leftovers for you two. They’re in the kitchen.”

As soon as he’s gone to look for them, Missouri puts a hand on Mary’s arm and leans in close. “That boy has too much heart. It brings him a lot of hurt… and gets him into a lot of trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Mary asks, heart thumping painfully.

“Lord knows you’ve already got enough on your plate, baby,” Missouri says. “I just want you to be wary.”

Cas returns before Mary has a chance to respond, carrying several tupperware containers of pie. “Is this what you meant?”

“That’s it exactly, Castiel,” Missouri says. “Now, you two be careful. And you keep in touch. I will not tolerate another seven years of silence.”

“That was Dean and Sam,” Cas points out.

“We’ll let you know if we find anything,” Mary promises. She searches Missouri’s expression, still a little unnerved by her vague… warning? Heads up? But Missouri just smiles at her. There’s a tinge of sympathy to it. 

Well, fine, then. Another mystery to worry about. “All right, let’s go find the car and get our stuff from the motel.”

“You should head northwest,” Missouri says. Mary raises her eyebrows, and she shrugs apologetically. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got. Head northwest.”

“Freaking cryptic psychics,” Mary mutters once they’re outside and well down the sidewalk, hopefully out of Missouri’s range. Missouri has been an extraordinarily gracious host, considering the danger Mary and Cas pose and the damage they did to her kitchen, and to complain seems petulant. It feels kind of good, though.

Cas glances at her and says delicately, “How are you feeling this morning, Mary?”

Mary smiles a little at his unexpected tact. “You mean am I going to burst into tears on the sidewalk?”

“Yes.”

“Hah. No, probably not. I’m trying not to think about it any more than I have to.”

Cas nods thoughtfully. “And does that work?”

“Not usually.”

Cas frowns and falls silent. Mary spends the rest of the walk figuring out what she even has left to think about given the growing list of things she’s attempting to actively ignore. Not thinking about things is _exhausting_.

“Would you like me to drive to the motel?” Cas offers when they find the car.

“No!” Mary says. “No. Thank you.” At least driving will give her something neutral to focus on.

They pack up quickly at the motel and pause in the parking lot to confer over the map. Cas uses the straight edge from their motel receipt to calculate an exact course to the northwest.

“I don’t think it’s actually going to be that precise,” Mary says dryly. “Guess we’ll just head for Idaho and stop a lot along the way, see if anything pops up.” Stopping a lot will mean more strategizing as she drives, which is good. “Hey, why don’t we put your navigating skills to the test? Find me backroads the whole way.”

Cas nods and bends over the map, as serious as if she’s just given him a life-or-death mission. Mary grins and resists the urge to ruffle his hair. He’s an adult, for all that his inexperience does come across as childlike sometimes, and it would probably feel condescending.

It’s not like he’s used to human social conventions, though. He might just accept it. She bundles him into the car and starts them off down the road before she can give in to temptation.

They stop for gas station lunches somewhere in southern Nebraska, Cas navigating meticulously between bites of gluey chicken salad sandwich and Mary skipping from oldies station to oldies station as one loses reception and the next emerges from the static. She calls Sam to check in and he seems to have recovered after last night’s uncertainty, which is good. She calls Dean as well, but gets his answering machine. An hour down the road he sends one of his half-incomprehensible text messages to say, as far as Mary and Cas can puzzle out, that everything’s fine and there’s no news to report.

They don’t talk much. Cas can be pretty reticent even on his best days, and aside from shooting her piercing looks from time to time he seems content to leave well enough alone and let her take the lead as far as the tone of the journey goes. For her part, Mary tries hard to keep everything light and easy and after a while it even starts to feel vaguely natural. By the time they stop in Cheyenne for the night, her smiles are coming effortlessly.

Cas puts his bag down on one of the beds, straightens determinedly, and says “We should find a bar.”

Mary blinks at him in surprise. “Uh. Sure. Why not?” She wouldn’t have pegged Cas for the bar type - he’s been pretty content to stay in and read or watch TV everywhere they’ve stayed - but they _have_ been traveling for a while. Maybe even ex-angels need to unwind sometimes. “I think we passed one down the road, want to give it a shot?” It might have food, if nothing else, and come to think of it it’s been quite a while since Mary’s had a decent beer. Somewhere between six months and thirty years, technically, since she usually sticks to stereotypically girly cocktails when she’s hustling pool.

The bar does indeed have food, and some passable locally-made beer that’s at least interesting. There’s a mid-range crowd present, so they pick a booth near the back entrance in case they need to make a quick escape. Cas scrutinizes the bar’s patrons as they drink, but he seems fairly relaxed about it.

“The man at the end of the bar has looked in your direction four times since we came in,” he announces after the waitress has brought their food.

“Trouble?” Mary asks, keeping her body language carefully calm.

Cas blinks. “No. I think he wants to have intercourse with you.”

Mary darts a quick look over her shoulder and shudders. “God. Warn me if he’s coming over, will you? That’s the last thing I need.”

Cas frowns and goes back to people-watching. “The man by the pool table also appears to be interested,” he says after a few minutes.

Mary steals some of his ketchup. “We’re fine on funds at the moment. It shouldn’t be necessary.”

Cas sighs in exasperation. “How about the one in the leather jacket?”

Mary freezes with a french fry halfway to her mouth. “Are you… trying to find me a guy, Cas?”

“Yes,” Cas says, as if it should have been obvious.

“Okay,” Mary says slowly. “Well, that’s, uh… sweet of you.” It’s probably the most charitable interpretation she can come up with right now. “If I wanted a guy I’d find one myself, but thanks.”

“Of course,” Cas says, and flags down the waitress. “Excuse me, can you recommend a place nearby for members of the same sex to -”

Mary slaps a hand across his mouth. “Ignore him,” she says to the waitress. 

“Um. Okay,” the waitress says. She goes back to the bar, glancing back at them as she walks.

 _”What are you doing?”_ she hisses at Cas as soon as the waitress is gone. Cas rolls his eyes expressively and gives her hand a pointed look. She pulls it back so he can answer.

“Would you prefer to start a fight instead?” he asks politely.

“What? No. Cas, what are you - “ Ah. The penny drops. “Look, if you want to have the room to yourself for the night, you can just ask. There’s nothing wrong with wanting some, you know. Companionship.”

“You’re my companion,” Cas says slowly.

“I mean if you want to have sex with someone!” Mary snaps. “Just say so, all right? Stop trying to get rid of me. I’m not going to cockblock you.”

Cas grimaces. “No, I’d rather not. It draws unwelcome attention.”

Mary gestures helplessly. “Then what is this all about?”

“When Dean is trying not to think about something he likes to drink, have sex, or fight,” Cas says matter-of-factly. “You’re alike in so many other ways I thought the same would be true for you. I apologize for my misconception.”

“Oh,” Mary says, deflating a little. “Well, I don’t do any of those. Not really. Not _entirely_. You said Dean and I are alike?”

“Very much so,” Cas says, seizing on this topic with relief. “He got his protectiveness from you, along with his talent for empathy and caretaking. He has a tendency to bury some of those qualities, possibly because they’re not considered to be masculine, but they are nevertheless powerful forces within him.”

“Oh.” It’s unexpectedly comforting to hear. Her conversations with Sam are always so easy, but aside from those first few talks they'd had Dean seems to prefer communicating with garbled and fairly impersonal texts. She’s trying not to read too much into it - texting seems to be a thing everyone does now, at least according to the things they’ve seen on TV, and she’s probably being old fashioned.

Still. It’s nice to know they have something in common.

“The offer still stands, though,” Mary says, partly for clarity’s sake and partly as an apology for jumping down Cas’s throat. “If you’d like to bring someone back to the room, just let me know and it’s all yours.”

Cas sighs. “No. The woman I slept with turned out to be an assassin in disguise who tortured me for information before stabbing me in the chest.” He frowns. “I’m still not sure why it was necessary to have intercourse first.”

Mary stares. “That… sounds like the worst morning after ever,” she says finally, hoping she’s understood the whole speech correctly.

“It was not technically my worst morning, but it wasn’t terribly enjoyable,” Cas agrees.

Mary tilts her head to the side thoughtfully. “Want to just go back to the motel and watch a movie?”

“Yes. Please,” Cas says.

Mary flags down the waitress again and asks for the bill, which arrives with a handwritten note on a napkin.

“Just, you know. In case,” the waitress says, and flees for the kitchen.

Cas picks up the napkin. “Oh, a gay bar. That was nice of her.”

They end up settling for a cartoon show rather than a movie, partly because they can’t decide on a movie and partly because they both like cartoons and the channel is doing a marathon. It actually turns out to be pretty good, more along the lines of a live-action drama than the cartoons Mary’s used to, and Cas seems to enjoy the way the show uses alchemy as a kind of magic. She falls asleep to the sound of the two main characters discussing the villain’s world-ending evil plans.

When she wakes up the next morning the show is still playing and Cas is sitting on his bed exactly as he was when she went to sleep, only now he’s surrounded by what looks like every scrap of paper in the room and he has a pen between his teeth and another parked behind his ear.

“Whu?” Mary says intelligently.

“I can’t talk right now,” Cas says, scribbling furiously on what Mary sincerely hopes isn’t the back of a page torn from the room’s Gideon bible.

Mary steals the coffemaker and retreats to the bathroom in the hopes that after coffee and a shower Cas will have sorted himself out. He hasn’t, by the time she emerges, but she feels much more able to deal with a bout of crazy so it all works out.

She sits down in the room’s spare chair and waits patiently for him to come to a stopping place.

“It needs more work,” Cas says finally, shuffling papers. He has a pen mark on one cheek. “But I can pause for a moment.”

“Okay,” Mary says agreeably. “Hey, Cas, whatcha doing?”

“Alchemy,” Cas says. “Well, not real alchemy, of either the historical or fictional varieties, but it’s as good a word as any. This is something of my own creation.” He points at the TV, muted and showing a commercial now. “The characters in that cartoon use sigils in order to trigger changes in their environment. It’s not dissimilar to some of the solutions mankind has come up with to deal with supernatural threats over the years - I suspect that someone involved in the creation of the show may have been a hunter or a scholar with experience in ancient trapping and banishing tactics.”

“And that led you to a night of crazy because…?” Mary prompts.

Cas frowns. With his red-rimmed eyes and ink-streaked face, it’s both less and more intimidating than usual. “It’s the same principle as what we did in the graveyard to banish the ghost of Timothy Shay Arthur. I think that given the right materials and the right combination of sigils, I might be able to recreate some of my angelic powers for human use.”

“Well, that could be useful,” Mary agrees. From what she’s seen ‘angelic powers’ mostly involve being a callous jerk and having super-strength, although from some of the things Cas has said there’s an ability to hear prayers and not catch colds, too, and she supposes that could be useful. “Why don’t we go get breakfast, huh? You look like you could use something to eat.”

Cas looks a little lost. “You don’t want me to continue?”

Mary shrugs. “Continuing is fine, but you just pulled an all-nighter. You need sleep or food, preferably both. Why don’t you work on it a little in the car, or when we stop for the night?”

Cas stares. “I don’t think anyone has ever tried to do this,” he says helplessly.

Mary smiles reassuringly and grabs his chin so she can hold his face steady while she cleans off the pen marks. “I’m really impressed, sweetie. It’s clearly taken a lot of work and I think it’ll be really great once it’s done.”

“You… don’t care if I have my angelic powers,” he says slowly.

Mary shrugs. “You say it’ll be useful and I trust you.”

“You don’t care if I have my angelic powers,” he says again, more quietly.

“Hey,” Mary says, cupping his now-clean cheek with one hand. “You okay?”

Cas is silent for a long moment, and then he leans forward a little and lowers his head. Mary takes the hint and kisses his forehead. He sighs deeply and gets up to go to the bathroom without saying a word.

Mary’s not entirely sure what’s going on in his head and he seems reluctant to explain it, but she must have responded appropriately because he spends the rest of the morning conscientiously doing as many little nice things for her as he can.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They cross the border into Idaho that afternoon and pull off at a Gas’n’Sip to fill up the tank and hopefully find something they’re supposed to do. Heading northwest is all well and good, but sooner or later they’re going to hit the Canadian border and Mary doesn’t want to try to explain Cas to the RCMP. From what she understands, the border patrol has gotten a lot more intense since the 1980s.

Mary charges Cas with locating snacks and/or something suspicious to investigate and sends him into the convenience store while she mans the pump.

He comes out a few minutes later with a copy of the local paper. “I think there may be something here.”

Nine times out of ten the things hunters investigate are either deadly or cause a lot of collateral damage, and Mary feels a little guilty for immediately brightening up. “Really?”

Cas holds out the paper. “Nine people have vanished in suspicious circumstances and the crime scenes have been covered in a ‘suspicious substance’. The police haven’t released any bodies or very much information, but everyone in the store is of the opinion that the vanished people are dead.”

Mary skims through the article. It’s pretty much exactly what Cas just said, plus a section of tips on how to avoid being targeted that were clearly written by someone who assumes a human criminal is to blame.

“The most recent one was last night,” Mary says. “Want to grab our badges and swing by the crime scene? I bet there’s still some activity there.”

There is, in fact - the house is still cordoned off and there are a number of local cops milling around looking alternately frustrated and nauseous. Mary and Cas slow to a stop by the crime scene tape and show their IDs.

The woman at the barrier, who has short dark hair and one arm in a sling under her sheriff’s jacket, gives them a long look and then says, “Hunters, huh? Guess that saves me the trouble of calling.”

Mary sighs. Sometimes it’s really better to gain trust by fessing up than to try to perpetuate a lie, and since the woman doesn’t seem upset about the deception it seems wisest to roll with it. “Badges no good?”

The woman shrugs with her good shoulder, holding up the crime scene tape so they can duck under. “Well, they’re not flawless.” She grins suddenly. “Also Dean keeps a picture of you in his wallet.”

Mary gives the woman’s jacket insignia a closer look. Dean had said South Dakota, right? “Are you Jody?”

“Well done!” She holds out a hand. “Mary and Cas, right? I think this one will be right up your alley.”

Mary shakes. Jody’s grip is firm and reassuring. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”

Jody rolls her eyes and gestures for them to follow her into the house. “Yes I am, in ever more interesting ways. Last week I helped your boys out on a case and got staked in the shoulder by a Roman goddess. I was _supposed_ to come up here and recuperate with my cousin and her kids, but then I heard about the disappearances and got curious.”

They step into the entryway of the house and any question Mary had been meaning to ask about how the dragon turned into a Roman goddess dries up and withers away. 

The entryway itself is mostly untouched, but it opens into a living room that has been completely coated in a fine pink spray. There’s a distinctive coppery smell in the air that Mary recognizes immediately, as impossible and horrifying as it should be.

“Is that…”

“What’s left of Mrs. Shoykhet? Yep. Lab tests got back a few days ago from the first scene. They’re still processing the others.”

“Well,” Mary says, mouth dry. “I have to admit, that’s a new one for me. How about - Cas?” She frowns. He’d definitely come in behind her, so where did he go? She sticks her head out onto the front porch. Nothing.

“I don’t blame him,” Jody says. “I don’t want to be in here either. I’ve seen more cops throw up at this scene than I have at any other, now that we know what the pink stuff is.”

“Cas isn’t squeamish,” Mary says, checking the kitchen. No Cas. “And it isn’t like him to leave without letting me know.”

“Really?” Jody says, heading down the hall. “Sam said that was practically his thing. Oh - got him. Backyard.”

Mary pushes past her and hurries through the back door. Cas is standing in the yard next to a tree. He’s half-turned away so she can’t see his face, but his grip on the tree bark is white-knuckled and he’s leaning towards it as if looking for support or maybe shelter.

“Cas?” Mary says, slowing as she reaches him. He looks very pale but physically unharmed. “Everything okay?”

“I know who did this,” Cas says hollowly. “What. I know what did this. I’ve seen it before.”

Mary chances putting a hand on his shoulder. His muscles are like rock under her hand, tensed and rigid. “Can you tell me?”

He shudders and closes his eyes. “On the battlefields of Heaven, there was a special class of angel, the Rit Zien. It's Enochian for 'hands of mercy.' They functioned like medics, they tended to the wounded, they healed those who could be healed. But for the mortally wounded, those who were past saving, the Rit Zien's job was to put them down. They had this way of smiting that was so quick and so total that it rendered death virtually painless. The Rit Zien home in on pain. It's like a beacon to them.”

“And one of them did this?” Jody asks, turning slightly so she can keep an eye on their surroundings while still listening in on the conversation. “It’s a mercy kill?”

“Yes.”

Jody glances back at them. “But why? Mrs. Shoykhet wasn’t hurt. I mean, apparently she was kind of depressed, but -”

“Pain is pain,” Cas says. He lets go of the tree and pulls away from Mary’s hand. “To an angel, there is very little difference. We don’t have emotions as you understand them and if this Rit Zien has had limited experience with humanity - he’s just trying to fulfill his purpose. To end suffering.”

“By killing people,” Mary clarifies.

“If he can’t fix the problem, that’s what he’s supposed to do,” Cas says tiredly. “He would have no idea what to do with depression or heartbreak or shame or any other kind of emotional wound. I’m not saying it’s right, but it is… logical.”

“God, I never thought I’d wish angels weren’t a thing,” Jody sighs. “Okay, so, what do we do?”

“Identify the angel,” Cas says. “Attempt to reason with him. Or her.”

“He killed _nine people,”_ Jody says incredulously.

Cas gives her a helpless look. 

“Okay,” Mary says, “how about we find him first and then see how the conversation goes? If all else fails, an angel blade will work on a Rit Zien, right?”

Cas nods reluctantly. He looks worn out, defeated… _scared_. Mary hadn’t even known Cas could do scared. She’s seen him worried, upset, and hallucinating, but in the face of danger he’s usually pretty damn unflappable. Whatever these Rit Ziens are capable of, just one of them is more intimidating than taking on a crowd of angels in a diner singlehandedly.

“First things first,” Mary says. “Let’s get a motel room so we have a base of operations, and then we can start looking into the past victims and see if there’s any kind of pattern we can use to track down the angel.” She catches Jody’s eye. “You want in on this? An extra hand could be helpful.”

Jody grins and waggles the fingers on her good hand. “One’s all I’ve got, but it’s yours if you want it.”

Jody has her own car, so Mary and Cas pile into theirs and follow her to a motel. Mary glances over at Cas as she drives. She’s not entirely sure what to say - ‘what are you thinking’ would probably be taken literally, ‘you seem scared’ might make him defensive.

“So,” she says finally. “These guys, you’ve seen them in action?”

His expression shuts down immediately. “Many times.”

Of course. Soldier. Mary clears her throat uncomfortably. “If you don’t mind me saying it, kiddo, you seem a little more thrown by this than usual.”

Cas’s mouth tightens. “The Rit Zien are not cruel,” he says finally. “If... _someone_ had been there to explain things to this one when he arrived, perhaps those nine people would have survived and we would not be hunting him now.”

Mary watches him carefully. “Someone like you, you mean?”

Cas looks down. It’s taken some time, since his expressions are often so subtle, but Mary spends enough time with him that she thinks she’s pretty much gotten the hang of interpreting them now. This is guilt. 

“How would you have known where he landed?”

Cas doesn’t answer, and a few minutes later they pull into the parking lot of the motel.

It’s a decent enough motel, as motels go - shabby but clean. Mary keeps an eye on Cas as they go through the process of checking in and unloading their things from the car. Logically, she knows that Cas is tough enough and stubborn enough to keep going and do whatever needs to be done.

Realistically, she also knows that he’s all twisted up about this Rit Zien thing and still exhausted from his all-nighter. It might make more sense tactically to keep Cas front and center in this whole mess, but she just can’t make herself do it.

“Cas, do you think your alchemy can help us with this at all?”

Cas pauses, frowning. “I’m not sure. I might be able to make a trap, but anything beyond that would probably take too much time. I’ll certainly need the Rit Zien’s name.”

“Trap’s better than nothing,” Mary says. “How much time do you need?”

“It will be quite complicated,” Cas says slowly. “As I said before, this is not something that has ever been done before. I’m already having to reinterpret our entire system of symbology. It will take me several hours to even figure out if it’s possible.”

“All right then,” Mary says decisively. “Cas, you stay here and see what you can do. Jody and I will head to the station and see if we can get a look at the police files. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” Jody says from where she’s leaning against the dresser. “At least one of us will have a real badge.”

Mary nods, satisfied. She’s not optimistic enough to think that Cas will get any rest while they’re out, but at least he’ll be in an obscure location doing a quiet job instead of navigating the human world on high alert. It’s the best she can do for now, and it _is_ a reasonable way to proceed.

Besides, this will give her an opportunity to talk to Jody and maybe find out a little bit about how Dean and Sam are actually doing.

“So he’s really an angel?” Jody asks as soon as the door shuts behind them. “I mean, really?’

“Well, ex-angel,” Mary clarifies. “He’s been human for a few months now and I get the impression that he was unusual before then. But yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s a angel.” She smiles a little at Jody’s expression and starts the car. “It took me a while to believe it, too, but going up against some real angels helped.” She swears under her breath as a rattletrap truck mistimes the turn into the parking lot and forces her to swerve out of the way. “Police station - right or left?”

“Left,” Jody says. “You’ve seen real angels?” There’s something in her eyes - cynicism, maybe, warring with hope, and that’s right. Sam had said she was religious.

“Yes,” Mary says, choosing her words carefully. “They were pretty hardcore, and not in a very good way.”

Jody raises an eyebrow, and Mary gives in. She seems like a pretty straight shooter. A little bluntness will probably be more appreciated than pussyfooting to spare her feelings. “They were wearing generic business suits and were not at all worried about collateral damage. Or killing innocent bystanders.”

Jody sighs. “Yeah. Sam warned me about that.”

“If it helps,” Mary says, “Cas says that the angels lost their way. I think they were intended to be the guardians we think of them as, and maybe some of them still are, but right now they’re panicking and terrified and nobody comes off well then.” She doesn’t mention God, and Jody doesn’t seem inclined to ask. She just nods.

“Thanks. That gives me something to think about.” She darts a looks in Mary’s direction. “I’m a mom, you know. You can go ahead and ask.”

Mary smiles. “How are my kids? Really, I mean. They say they’re fine, but…”

“‘Fine’ can mean anything,” Jody agrees. “They’re holding it together. They’re watching out for each other. But they seem… a little more fragile than they were the last time I saw them.”

Mary bites her lip, worried. “Sam called me right after your case and sounded upset, but he wouldn’t say much.” Would he talk to her if she was there in person? Would she be able to help?

She can’t _stand_ being out here. Useless.

No. Now’s not the time. Push it back.

Jody snorts. “That’s him, all right. Both of them.” She reaches over with her good hand and squeezes Mary’s leg. “I think they’ll be better now that you’re back, I really do. It’s been hard on them since they lost Bobby. He watched out for them.”

“Cas mentioned a Bobby,” Mary remembers. She’s glad there was someone they could turn to, even if it couldn’t have been her or John.

“Miserable old curmudgeon,” Jody says fondly. “He was good with those boys, though, and he had a heart of gold underneath the trucker cap and the bad attitude.” Her voice softens. “I miss him a lot, too.”

Mary winces. She’s glad to hear about the mysterious Bobby, but she’s sorry she brought up something that makes Jody sad. “So, you said you’re a mom? Boy or girl, or more than one?”

“Boy,” Jody says quietly. “He passed away when he was seven. Came back as a zombie during some supernatural upset or another. Ate my husband. Sam had to shoot him.” Her voice trails away to almost nothing.

Mary pulls the car over and gives her a hug. She’s never had that specific nightmare before, but as a mother with a detailed knowledge of the supernatural she’d be lying if she claimed to have never woken up screaming from something similar. 

Jody hugs her back tightly for a moment, then pulls away. “All right! Enough gloomy stuff. Let’s go look at crime scene pictures.”

It’s not that funny, but they both laugh.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jody’s credentials get them past the front desk and into the conference room with a box full of files and a grudgingly helpful Sheriff. Mary starts laying out the files, organizing them chronologically, so Jody turns to the Sheriff.

“Question for you,” she says. “How do the victims break down in terms of mental and physical health?”

The Sheriff’s eyebrows rise. “Well, they weren’t the healthiest bunch, I guess.” He moves over and starts tapping relevant files. “These four were sick - two on hospice, one chronic but surviving, one diabetic and not managing it well, if you get my drift. This one was fine, although she'd just broken up with her boyfriend and you know teenagers - everything's the end of the world. Then we had depression, repeated threats of suicide, and alcoholism.”

“That’s eight,” Jody says. “What about the ninth?”

“Not dead,” the Sheriff says, shrugging. “DNA came back on the first crime scene and it was only one body. Husband did a runner, probably. Wouldn’t have been the first time.”

Mary frowns and grabs the first folder. There’s a picture inside of the not-so-happy couple, smiling and leaning up against a rattletrap truck.

“That truck looks familiar,” Jody says, leaning over Mary’s shoulder.

“Wasn’t at the crime scene,” the Sheriff offers.

“It cut us off when we were coming out of the motel parking lot,” Mary says slowly. The Rit Zien are angels, right? That means they have to possess someone. That means there’s someone out there who looks perfectly ordinary is actually an angel.

An angel who homes in on pain. An angel who’s homing in on pain _at the motel._

She drops the file, dread settling heavy and hard into her stomach. “Cas has too much heart,” she gasps, staring at Jody in horror. “It brings him a lot of hurt.”

Jody doesn’t get the reference, but she’s right on Mary’s tail when she bolts for the parking lot.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The door to the motel room is open.

The moment she sees it her heart starts pounding faster. She doesn’t bother turning off the car, she just grabs her angel blade and runs, shouldering her way through the doorway and throwing the door back so hard the doorknob gets stuck in the plaster wall. Cas is on his knees on the floor, the Rit Zien standing over him with one hand raised. 

Even as she hurls herself across the room her mind is taking little snapshots of everything in front of her: the way Cas is holding one arm close to his chest like it’s hurt, the oddly serene look on the Rit Zien’s face, the desperate tone in Cas’s voice as he says “I want to live.”

Mary launches herself at the angel, aiming to kill him or hurt him or at least get herself between Cas and danger. The Rit Zien barely looks up as she nears, he just waves with one hand and sends her flying into the wall. She fuzzes out for a moment, her breath locked in her chest band the back of her head throbbing, and comes back to the sound of Jody emptying a clip into the Rit Zien’s chest.

He sends her flying as well. Mary can’t even spare an instant to look over and see if she’s okay. The Rit Zien has his hand out over Cas’s face again and it’s starting to glow pink. They are out of time.

She ignores her bruises, her trouble breathing, and a good chunk of common sense, and lunges at the Rit Zien’s back.

He twists but this time she manages to get in a good swipe to his side. He backhands her hard, sending her bouncing against the edge of the bed and onto the floor, and she loses her grip on the angel blade but it’s worth it. There’s blue light seeping through the cut his side now, and that’s got to be good, right?

“You’re in pain too,” he says, and reaches for her. Jody hauls herself up from the floor and puts her last two bullets right into his chest, but he barely seems to notice. His hand starts to glow pink again and Mary feels warmth against her face, sticky and uncomfortable.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cas pick up the blade in his good hand and thrust upwards with all his strength, burying the blade under the Rit Zien’s ribcage.

The Rit Zien throws his head back, screaming. Blue-white light floods from his eyes and mouth and then there’s a soundless explosion that knocks Mary back on the floor, banging her head painfully a second time. The carpet is a little more forgiving than the wall had been, but it’s still not much fun. 

The Rit Zien slumps to the ground, tumbling into Cas and knocking him flat.

Mary staggers to her feet and drags the body off of him. There’s ash all over the floor, she’s not sure why, but none of it is on Cas so she ignores it in favor of patting Cas down, feeling for blood or broken bones and listening for any gasps of pain. She’s so intent on it that she almost doesn’t notice him saying “I’m okay, Mary, it’s fine, I’m all right.”

That arm is definitely broken, though. She forces the world to settle and slow down around her and takes it gently, supporting it carefully as she tries to figure out how bad the damage is. The break seems to be high up, near his wrist, and she’d just bet that part of the Rit Zien’s conversation had involved bending it back until it snapped.

“Oh,” Cas says vaguely. “That’s… that’s not right, is it? That’s hurt.”

“It’ll be fine, Cas,” Mary says soothingly. “Jody? Are you okay?”

“You _Winchesters,”_ Jody moans. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She uses the edge of the bed to haul herself upright and stares openmouthed at the floor. “Whoa. Wings.”

Mary undoes Cas’s shirt cuff as gently as possible - that wrist is going to start swelling soon. She has a standard hunter’s first aid kit, which is to say it’s ridiculously complete even if many of the ingredients are either repurposed or alcoholic, but broken bones usually require a visit to the ER.

“Jody, is there an ER nearby?”

“Even better,” Jody says, tucking her useless gun into her waistband. “My cousin runs a veterinary clinic a few miles away. I’m guessing you crazy kids don’t have insurance.”

Mary shakes her head. Faking insurance is probably lot more complicated now than it was thirty years ago, and quite frankly she’s a little too rattled to try. If they’d gotten here even a minute later -

Well. They didn’t.

“Cas, do you think you can stand?”

Cas blinks at her, eyes huge and shocky in his pale face. He’s trembling, too - she can’t believe she didn’t notice.

“Yes?” He says. “Yes. I’m sure I can.”

Even so, it takes Jody and Mary working together to get him upright and keep him there. He keeps stumbling over his own feet and unfortunately he’s just enough taller than both of them to make it awkward.

“I don’t entirely understand what’s happening,” he says plaintively as they try to ease him into the backseat without anybody getting their head whacked on the side of the car.

It’s the beginning stages of shock, Mary’s pretty sure, and they should be lying him down right now instead of making him walk around, but Mary’s also _very_ sure that this motel’s no longer safe and they need to get away from it as fast as possible.

“Your body’s just reacting to being hurt, sweetie,” she says, buckling him in. “You’re going to be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s a lie to make me feel better,” Cas says. “Thank you.”

Jody gives him an incredulous look. Mary shakes her head. Whatever makes Cas feel better is fine by her whether it makes human sense or not.

Jody takes the wheel, pulling off her sling so she can call her cousin while she drives. Mary slides in beside Cas, tucking herself up against his side and rubbing his shoulder soothingly. The shakes are getting a little worse, but his skin doesn’t feel any clammier.

“I didn’t want him dead,” Cas says dully. “I wanted to help him. He asked me why I didn’t try.”

Mary bites her lip, carding her fingers through Cas’s hair. He leans into the touch, but only a little - maybe reluctant to accept the comfort, maybe just conscious of Jody’s presence in the front.

“Hey, Cas,” Mary says finally. “Want to hear the song I used to sing to Dean and Sammy when they were little?” It’s all she can think of, and it used to work on the boys. It’s worth a shot.

Cas’s eyes lose a little of that dullness. “I would be honored.”

 _“Hey, Jude,”_ Mary sings quietly. _“Don’t make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better...”_

By the time they reach the clinic Mary’s gone through the song twice, Cas’s shaking has mostly eased, and Jody’s started harmonizing from the front seat.

“Church choir,” she says sheepishly when Mary makes an appreciative face at her in the rearview mirror. “All right, my cousin says the clinic’s empty and she’s ready for us. Let’s go.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jody’s cousin, to her everlasting credit, doesn’t bat an eye when she sees her patient and never asks any questions beyond the medical necessities. It might be that Jody explained the situation well - to be honest, Mary hadn’t really been listening - but Mary suspects it’s mostly because her cousin’s just that unflappable. Mary watches like a hawk as she x-rays Cas’s wrist, sets it, and goes about putting his cast on.

“That’ll need to dry,” she says, snapping her gloves off. “Give it about an hour.”

Mary nods. Cas has dozed off with his head on the table, the combination of the all-nighter, the injury, and what Mary suspects were some pretty powerful painkillers all kicking in at once.

Jody tugs Mary’s arm, tilting her head towards the corridor. Mary follows her out, ready for questions or maybe some strategizing, and is surprised when Jody just pulls her into a hug. 

“Good job,” she says into Mary’s hair. “The kid's safe. You did good.”

Mary doesn’t cry and she doesn’t shake. It’s just that every muscle in her body is suddenly dependent on Jody for support. 

Jody rubs her back until she’s ready to stand on her own again. “I didn’t actually love my husband,” Mary blurts. Jody blinks at her, utterly nonplussed, but Mary can’t seem to stop herself. “The angels set us up. There was some kind of prophecy about Dean and Sam and, and we started out hating each other, we never would have - and now I can’t go _near_ them because it’s dangerous and I don’t know what to do. It’s possible Lucifer needs me for a vessel and I don’t want to know how he’s going to convince me and I should tell the boys but I just can’t and I hate this, I hate this so much, I want my babies back -” she cuts herself off, horrified. Jody’s son is dead. Hers are at least still alive.

Jody ducks her head, shoulders tense. When she looks up again her expression is sad but composed. “You still lost them, Mary,” she says quietly. “It’s okay to mourn, even though they’re alive.”

“I miss them so much,” Mary whispers. She manages to keep her tears back, but just barely.

“I know,” Jody sighs. “It fucking sucks.”

“Do you know -” Mary hesitates, then barrels on. “Do you know if Dean’s upset with me? Sam will talk to me on the phone, but I think Dean’s avoiding me.”

Jody shrugs. “I don’t know for sure, but Sam was really little when you died, wasn’t he?”

“Six months,” Mary confirms. “Dean was four.”

“So Sam doesn’t have any memories of you,” Jody says, and winces apologetically. “Not really, I mean. He’s free to meet you now on even terms, but Dean actually remembers you. He’s probably got a lot more invested in your good opinion and I wouldn't be surprised if he was worried you'd be disappointed in him for some reason.”

Cas had said that she and Dean were a lot alike, and Jody’s speculation does sound a little too close to home. She’d _hated_ disappointing her parents. 

“This was a lot easier when I could just make them pie and sing a lullaby,” she says, a little resentfully. Jody just sighs.

They stand silently in the corridor, shoulder-to-shoulder, until the hour is up and they can take a groggy Cas back to the car.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It’s harder to get Cas into the new motel several towns down the road than it was to get him into the car, partly because the medication has him full-on zonked out now and partly because there’s no Jody to help. She’d stayed behind to get a ride with her cousin back to her car, with strict instructions to get the hell out of Dodge before any more angels showed up. They don’t know if the Rit Zien was working with anyone else or not, but it’s safest to assume the worst.

Once Cas is settled in one of the room’s double beds, propped up on his side in case the painkillers make him nauseous, Mary steps out onto the tiny balcony with her phone.

 _Does Cas have too much heart?_ she texts.

She’d probably have a better chance of getting a response from Sam, but the tension between Cas and Dean makes her think he might be the better choice. Also, it’s been a long day and she’s starting to get a little annoyed at Dean’s refusal to communicate.

He calls her back within a minute. “What happened?”

Well, that’s pretty telling. “We’re both fine, mostly,” she says. “We had a run-in with an angel. Cas broke his wrist and I’m a little banged up, but we’re both safe.”

There’s a sharp, relieved exhale from the other end of the line. “Okay,” Dean says. “Okay. That’s good. Jesus, Mom, where did you even hear that phrase?”

“A psychic named Missouri Mosely who’s very irritated with you for never calling or writing,” Mary says dryly. “Why? Does it mean something to you?”

“I’ve heard it before and it’s accurate,” Dean says neutrally. “Cas can get a little carried away, particularly when it comes to helping the angels. They don’t want his help and they don’t deserve it, but he won’t stop trying.”

“I think he wants to try again,” Mary says. “Would it be so bad? If someone had been around to help the angel we ran into, it probably never would have gotten as out of control as it did.”

“The last time he tried to help all the angels got kicked out of Heaven,” Dean says harshly. “The time before that he went genocidal-angry and killed a crapton of people. He’s a good guy and his heart’s in the right place, but helping the angels never goes well. It makes him vulnerable and then everybody catches it in the teeth.”

Mary rubs her forehead. “All right. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Look,” Dean says, sounding suddenly tired. “There’s nobody else I’d rather have watching my back, except maybe Sam, and even then it would depend on the situation. He’d die to protect us - he even _has_ \- but he has a tendency to go way too far. Maybe it’ll be easier now that he’s human, I don’t know, but as an angel he cares too much.”

“I don’t know either,” Mary says, feeling just as worn out. Cas had said angels don’t have feelings. Dean seems to think just the opposite. Whatever the case, that Rit Zien was able to follow his pain straight through layers of warding and find him effortlessly. “I don’t know anything about what happened in the past, Dean. All I know is what I’ve got now.”

“Yeah,” Dean sighs. “Look, Mom, if he tries to… look, if he starts talking about the spell that kicked the angels out of Heaven, let me know, okay?”

“Sure,” Mary says. “Have you heard something about it?”

“Oh, no,” Dean says. “We’re working the demon angle, we’re not looking into that or anything. No, just if you need someone to help convince him not to get too worked up about it.”

“Right, yeah,” Mary says. “Yeah, I’ll let you know. Oh - it might not turn out to be anything, but Cas is looking into a way to recreate some of his angel abilities with sigils. We saw a cartoon - well, it’s kind of complicated. Anyway, we’re not sure if it’ll work, but it’s something to keep in mind.”

“It would be good to have a little mojo on our side,” Dean says, perking up considerably. “Tell him to get cracking on it, huh?”

“Well, he’s one-handed now,” Mary point out dryly. “It might slow him up just a little.”

“Excuses, excuses. I’ll let you go - we’ve got some stuff to take care of before we can turn in tonight.”

“Of course, sweetie,” Mary says, a little thrown. “Have a good night. I love you.”

“You too, Mom.”

Mary leans her head back against the glass doors for just moment. She’s glad to have had a conversation with Dean, and she thinks it went pretty well, but it was pretty business-oriented. She would have liked…

Well. Baby steps. This is better than text messages, and she’s pretty sure she never came across as disapproving or disappointed or whatever else Dean is scared of. That’s good, right?

She goes back into the motel room and checks on Cas. He wakes up a little and mumbles something incoherent when she brushes the hair back off his forehead.

“Hey, Cas?” Mary asks. She’s not sure if he’s awake enough for this, and maybe that’s for the best. “You said that angels don’t feel emotions the same as humans. Are you… okay?”

“Hmm.” Cas hums a little, eyelids drooping shut. “Felt them as an angel sometimes. Not supposed to. Crack in my chassis.”

She strokes his hair. “And now?”

“Hurts,” Cas says, and smiles a little. “‘S how I’m know I’m human.”

He looks happy about it, even though his words imply the opposite. She supposes that after an eternity of being thought defective for feeling it would be something of a relief to be a creature who was _supposed_ to feel. “Do you like being human?”

Cas buries his face in his pillow and sighs contentedly. “Do now.”

Mary smiles and strokes his hair again. He doesn’t budge.

“Sleep well, Cas,” she murmurs. “Sleep like a - well. Sleep like a human, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, Ephraim ultimately killed six people during his crusade. Since I’ve switched around the episode order and put this bit of plot later on, I upped the body count correspondingly.
> 
> Also, the cartoon that Cas and Mary watch in the motel is _Fullmetal Alchemist_. Since I personally like the _Brotherhood_ incarnation best, that’s the one they’re watching.
> 
> ETA: The amazing [tales-at-dusk](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/) has illustrated the scene of Cas and Mary in the motel room with Cas's alchemy research! You can find it [here](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/post/86149266088). Go forth and shower it with praises! :D


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: violence, some torture, Mary’s potty mouth  
> SPOILERS: Big plot ones for 09x09 ‘Holy Terror’, and I borrowed a bit of dialogue, too  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: driving routes, the Vietnam War  
> NEW TAGS: Malachi, hurt Castiel, Joshua, Theo, canon-typical violence

The morning dawns bright and sunny, with Cas gasping in pain and sitting up to give his arm a betrayed look.

“Cas? You okay?”

He wiggles his fingers and winces. “I’m fine. It will pass.”

He’s a little less sanguine about the whole thing when he learns about the precautions necessary for taking a shower. Mary’s probably a bad person for laughing at his expression when she finishes taping a plastic bag around his cast, but she does it anyway.

Cas sighs. 

The shower does help, though, for both of them. Mary’s got some pretty impressive bruises going on herself, and although getting undressed isn’t a particularly pleasant experience she feels much better after standing under the hot water for a while. Once he’s been fed and doped up, Cas seems to be much more upbeat as well.

“It’s part of being human,” he says with a determined expression. “It’s very educational.”

“Speaking of educational,” Mary says, digging a complimentary pad of paper out of the motel’s desk drawer, “this is a good time to ask you a few questions.”

Cas nods. He’s glassy-eyed but alert, and Mary knows from her own experience that one of the most frustrating things about being injured is the inactivity. Particularly in the early days of his injury, Mary doesn’t want to risk putting Cas in any physical danger, which means the most activity they’re going to do is switching motels every few days. The scenery changes will help, of course, but she’s noticed that Cas has kind of a thing about being useless.

“All right, then,” Mary says, clicking her pen. “I need to know whatever you can tell me about angels.”

Half an hour later, she realises that she should have been a lot more specific. As interesting as angelic social conventions might be under other circumstances, and as much as Cas seems to enjoy reminiscing, this is actually supposed to also be a _useful_ conversation.

“How about the power struggles now?” she asks. “What can you tell me about those?”

“Right, right,” Cas says, nodding. The pain medication is making him just a tiny bit loopy, which in turn leads to a much more rambling conversational pattern. Since they have the time for it, it’s funny instead of frustrating. Mary smiles. “Okay. At the moment there are two factions of angels we know about, and then Metatron in Heaven who stands alone. There is the faction that brought you back, led by Muriel, whose aims are mostly a matter of speculation but possibly involve Lucifer, which would be most unfortunate.”

Mary winces, but writes it down.

“Then there is the faction led by Bartholomew, which currently seems to be focused on increasing their numbers and killing me. Killing me may not be a primary goal but they do seem very dedicated to it which perhaps shows that vindictiveness is not emotionally-based -” he catches himself and refocuses. “They may also be after information about the spell that cast them out of Heaven, which indicates that their likely ultimate goal is to storm Heaven and seize control from Metatron.”

“Can they do that?” Mary asks, fascinated.

Cas considers it. “It will be a very complicated endeavor,” he says finally. “The angels are flightless and Metatron has doubtless also barred them from Heaven, but there may be paths they can open up if they become truly desperate. Dean and Sam found one by dying, and I was able to exploit one to send a message to them but I lacked the power or the moral flexibility to force my way through completely.”

Mary blinks, but Cas carries on. “In addition, as the only inhabitant of Heaven Metatron has sole possession of all of its resources, which include weapons and information. Also access to all the various Heavens, which I haven’t assessed the tactical advantage of yet. He is not a soldier, but with that much power at his disposal anyone opposing him will have to strategize carefully.”

“And what does Metatron want?” Mary asks, tallying up items on her pad.

Cas frowns. “Unclear. As far as I know he has already achieved his goals, which were to take Heaven’s power for his own and to punish the angels for forcing him to flee Heaven. He may be content with what he has.”

“But he might not,” Mary says.

“Correct,” Cas says, and shakes his head with frustration. “I don’t understand him well enough to predict what he might do next.” His face falls. “I never have. I’m not sure how to compensate for it yet.”

“Do you think he knows what the other angels are up to?”

“It depends,” Cas says slowly. “He has the ability to look down and see what he may, but there are ways to cloak oneself from that kind of observation. The wards we put up, for example, and the sigils I carved into Dean and Sam’s ribs. Some of those wards are very obscure, and for the most part they only work on humans, but it’s not impossible that someone else knows about them.”

“Hang on,” Mary says, holding up a hand. “Sigils carved into Dean and Sam’s ribs? How is that even possible?”

Cas blinks at her earnestly. “It was only briefly painful,” he assures her.

“Aha,” Mary says.

“The more relevant question is probably ‘does Metatron _care_ what the angels are up to?’”

Right. Now _she’s_ the one wandering off topic. “Do you think he might intervene?”

Cas makes a face. He’s a lot more expressive when he’s stoned on painkillers. “If they pose him a threat, perhaps. At the moment I don’t think he cares how many angels have found vessels or what leaders are emerging. When he stole my Grace he said he looked forward to seeing me in Heaven after my death and hearing how my life had turned out. At that point I don’t think he had any plans to observe, but he has expressed an interest in stories. He might change his mind.” He goes quiet at the end of this, looking troubled.

“What do you mean when you say he stole your Grace?” Mary asks. She has a vague idea that an angel’s Grace must be something like a soul, or perhaps the thing that makes them immortal, but she really isn’t sure. It doesn’t seem like either of those things should be stealable - after all, human souls can only be given with consent. That should be true for angels too, shouldn’t it?

Cas’s poker face returns with a vengeance. “I’d rather not talk about it. It was... I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay. You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Mary says soothingly. Whatever it entailed, it was clearly unpleasant. She sets the pad aside. “That’s probably good for the moment. I’m going to go out and replenish our funds - why don’t you take a nap until I get back?”

“I do feel tired,” Cas says, surprised.

Mary smiles and helps him settle down. “Healing takes a lot of energy for humans, but it won’t be forever. You’ll probably be tired for the next few days and then you’ll start feeling more normal.”

Cas nods, eyes already starting to close. “I see. Thank you.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wasn’t lying - they do need money - but she’s also planning to use the opportunity to make a few calls. Cas is generally a very easy-going companion, considering they’ve been living practically in each other’s pockets for the past few weeks, but there’s something to be said for talking on the phone without an audience. It just feels _awkward_ when there’s someone else listening.

Almost as she’s finished that thought, her phone rings. Mary glances down at the little screen and laughs.

“Gee,” she says, “You must be psychic.”

She can practically _hear_ Missouri’s unimpressed expression. 

“If you were any closer I’d smack you for that,” Missouri says tartly. “How are you doing, baby?”

Mary sighs. “A little battered, but safe. We went northwest and ran into some angel trouble.”

“Sorry about that,” Missouri says. “Speaking of trouble, can you tell me how to find the warehouse they resurrected you in?”

“Probably, but why do you need to know?” Mary asks, taken aback.

“I’m just following a hunch.”

She’d been so focused on finding somewhere safe at the time that ‘Nebraska’ is pretty much all she’s got, and that’s mostly because of the license plates on the cars she stole. She thinks it was in the southern part of the state, though, and she remembers the name of the town they’d hidden out in, so that should be enough to start with. “Let me sit down with some maps and get back to you, okay? It wasn’t in a town or anything - I’m going to have to backtrack.”

“Thank you, that’ll be helpful. Now, did you have a question for me?”

“Oh! Right. Yes. Do you know any hunters who’ve been gathering lore on angels? Symbols and traps particularly.” Sooner or later she’s going to exhaust the limits of relevant angel knowledge and need something else for Cas to do. Besides, extra research materials can hardly hurt, right? There must be a limit to how much even Cas can pull from memory alone.

Missouri hums thoughtfully. “There aren’t as many as you’d think,” she says finally, “and hunters have been hit pretty hard in the last few years. There’s been a lot of knowledge lost. Bobby Singer had a good collection, which I gather is with your boys now. And Jim Murphy had an interest in it - partly professional, he was a pastor - but he was killed years ago. I can tell you how to find his cache and there might be something still there - Caleb was his backup and he died shortly after Jim did. He might not have gotten it all cleaned out.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Mary says. It will give them a destination to work towards, anyway, instead of randomly picking motels from a map until Cas is up to fighting. “Where is it?”

“Blue Earth, Minnesota. It’s hidden in the church basement.”

After hanging up on Missouri, Mary calls the boys and gets answering machines from both of them. Probably working a case, then. She’s not sure if their successful conversation last night means Dean will ease up on his only-communicate-via-texts behavior pattern from here on out, but Sammy would have answered if he was free.

Phonecall duty completed, she embarks on her money-raising mission. Hustling pool isn’t at it’s easiest in the middle of the afternoon, but it’s not impossible. There’s a smaller pool of marks, but they also tend to be drunker and more bored. It’s only a few hours before she judges they’ve got enough to last them to the next town and heads back to the motel.

Cas is awake and at work on his sigil project when she returns, but the pillow creases on the side of his face tell her that he hasn’t been at it for long.

“It’s a good thing you aren’t left-handed,” she says, watching him scribble away with his injured arm tucked against his stomach.

“I am whatever I most need to be,” Cas says absently, using a second pen to make different-colored marks on a page already dense with them. “The Rit Zien broke this arm because it’s the one I was using to write the banishing sigil behind my back. It is an odd thing, being injured,” he continues, putting down his pen. “The pain makes it difficult to concentrate, but the medicine that causes the pain to ease makes it more so.”

Mary makes herself comfortable on her bed, leaning back against the headboard with her legs crossed at the ankles. “It also depends on the strength of the painkillers. Something like Tylenol or ibuprofen would dull the pain without making your head fuzzy, but since a broken bone usually causes a lot of pain the medicine has to be stronger to compensate. That comes with drawbacks.”

Cas considers this. “And the addition of alcohol to the painkilling regimen?”

“Is _not_ recommended,” Mary says firmly. 

Cas frowns. 

“Unless there are no other options,” she concedes. There is, after all, a reason why most hunter first aid kids involve a bottle of Jack. Still, it’s probably best to teach Cas good first aid habits before introducing him to the desperate ones.

Cas accepts this, still frowning slightly, and turns back towards his work.

“Hey,” Mary says before he can become engrossed, “change of plans. I talked to Missouri and she put me on to a possible cache of angel lore in Minnesota. Would that be useful? We could cut across Wyoming and South Dakota and check in with Jody.”

“Human interpretations of angelic lore are rarely accurate,” Cas says.

“Oh,” Mary says, feeling a little offended on behalf of humanity.

Cas catches her expression. “That’s actually ideal for my purposes. I am looking for ways in which our known sigils can be reinterpreted. A markedly different perspective could be valuable.”

“Oh,” Mary says, mollified. “Well, we can set off tomorrow, then.”

Her phone buzzes with a text message from Dean: _all ok this end_. Mary frowns. It’s very unusual for Dean to respond and Sam to be the silent one. Still, Dean says everything is fine. Maybe Sam’s phone is simply out of batteries or was damaged during their case. It’s probably nothing to worry about.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They set off for Minnesota the next morning, Cas grimacing his way through his first day of non-narcotic pain meds and Mary in considerably brighter spirits after having received a text from Sam late the night before ( _Sorry I didn’t hear my phone! Everything is fine. Hope you’re both doing well_ ).

They stop for lunch partway through Wyoming, taking the chance on a diner instead of drive-through or gas station fare. There is a TV playing the local news over the counter, and that’s when all their plans get thoroughly derailed.

The first indication Mary has that anything is awry is when she realises Cas has turned around in his seat in order to be able to see the TV more fully. She’d tuned it out as she sat down, busy calculating speed and mileage so she can give Jody an arrival estimate, and she puts down her map to focus on the report. It’s something about a massacre at a biker bar.

“Trouble?” She asks quietly.

Cas doesn’t turn back. “Yes. I think so.”

Mary sighs and sets aside her expectations for a quiet few days. “All right. Which way?”

“Caribou,” Cas says. “I don’t know where that is.” He turns back, finally, wincing as he bumps his wrist against the table.

Mary eyes him skeptically. “You sure you’re up for this? I can look into it on my own.”

Cas’s face is determined. “Pain is a physical matter only. I will set it aside.”

Mary rolls her eyes and hands him the bottle of painkillers.

The biker bar is the kind of rundown rural bar Mary’s seen a hundred times before - shabby, in the middle of nowhere, only able to stay in business because the locals know how to find it.

The inside’s a different matter, though. There’s blood everywhere and about fifteen ashy smudges on the floor that look bizarrely like sets of wings.

“Angels?” Mary murmurs under her breath to Cas.

He nods grimly. “And this was not just a fight. These killings were brutal, messy for the sake of messiness. This was intended to send a message.”

Mary looks the room over again. He’s right - there are bloody smears by both exits, as if some of the angels being killed had tried to run. And the blood behind the bar looks almost…

“Cas, is that one of your sigils?”

Cas moves to look at it from a different angle, squinting. Large splashes of blood don’t make for the best penmanship, apparently. “Yes. It’s Enochian. Not a trap or a banishing, but a… well, the closest analogy in human terms would probably be a national flag, set on fire. That symbol is a mark of specific and targeted disrespect towards Bartholomew. It is... an un-claiming. This place has been un-claimed in his name. It’s likely the bikers were angels in his faction and this place was a headquarters for them.”

Mary’s heart sinks. She doesn’t claim to have anywhere near the understanding of angelic politics that she probably should have, Cas’s tutorial sessions notwithstanding, but it’s not too hard to see what’s going on here. Weeks of silence while at least one angelic faction is definitely building its numbers, and then signs of a skirmish? 

The preparations are over. It’s battle time.

“The question is,” Mary says aloud, “Was this Muriel’s work or was it someone else entirely?”

She means it as a rhetorical question, but of course Cas answers anyway. “Impossible to say from this evidence, but it isn’t in keeping with what we know of Muriel’s goals so far. On the other hand, if it isn’t Muriel then there is a faction at work which we know nothing about, and that is troubling.”

Well, that’s an understatement. Mary runs her hand through her hair, thinking hard. The two of them aren’t a match for a bunch of bloodthirsty angels - not in a straight fight, anyway. They’ve survived two encounters so far only by being fast on the draw with banishing sigils. 

But they do need information. There’s no telling how quickly this conflict could escalate or how many people could be caught in the crossfire. Mary had been fifteen when the My Lai massacre had made the news in America, and she’d been twenty-one when the Vietnam War had finally ended. She knows that skirmishes only last so long - sooner or later someone’s going to get serious, and she doesn’t want to know what ‘getting serious’ means to angels. She _definitely_ doesn’t want to learn about it from the front lines.

“Okay. How do we find out what’s going on?”

Cas shakes his head in frustration, then stops suddenly. “We could ask someone,” he says slowly.

Mary frowns. “You mean like ask Missouri to come here and try to pick something up?”

“I mean contact a neutral angel and see what they know,” Cas says.

Mary gapes at him.

“That, um, seems like a _really terrible_ idea,” she says finally. “Besides the fact that we don’t even know if there _are_ any neutral angels, aren’t they all pretty much united in hating you?” 

This doesn’t draw the response she was hoping for (dissuasion) or the one she was worried about (depression). Instead, Cas smiles. “The angel I’m thinking of has the authority to avoid taking sides and has pledged himself to nonviolence.” He heads purposefully towards the door. “We need to find a garden.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They eventually wind up several miles away in the expansive back garden of an immaculate house which is at least temporarily unoccupied. Mary would feel better about the whole thing if there were several days’ worth of newspapers on the porch or all the furniture was under sheets or something, but there’s a discreet sign taped to the back door that instructs someone named B.C. to remember to water the tomato plants until Sunday evening and that’s going to have to be good enough.

The garden is hemmed in on the edges by bushes and large plants, so after painting a precautionary banishing sigil on one of the yard’s decorative wooden benches Cas plants himself unselfconsciously in the middle of the yard.

“Do you need to do some kind of ritual?” Mary asks, gripping her angel sword in one hand and keeping a weather eye on the lilacs.

“There are rituals to locate or summon angels, but they require either Grace or ingredients that we don’t have time to locate,” Cas says. “I will pray to him.”

“Okay. Sure.” Mary says nervously. She tells herself firmly that Cas might risk himself for information but he’d never risk her, so there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. “What happens if he’s not around here? You guys can’t fly any more.”

“Joshua has always been unique,” Cas says. “If any angel still possesses the ability to travel, it will be him. Also,” he adds dryly, “I’m going to give him our phone number.”

Mary laughs a little despite herself. “Okay, yeah. That might work.”

Cas smiles back. “Be ready. I will begin.”

He bends his head in prayer and Mary tightens her grip on her sword.

Four hours later, she’s considerably less on edge. Castiel is still praying - he’s gone from head bent to on his knees to completely prostrate and back up again with nothing to show for it, and Mary’s sprawled on the grass with her legs stretched out. She’s not a total idiot - the sword’s still within easy reach - but hypervigilance can really only be maintained for so long before one’s feet begin to hurt.

After six hours, she pretty much gives up.

“Any news, Cas?” she asks wearily from where she’s flat on her back with one arm flung over her eyes.

Cas falters to a stop in the middle of a half-hearted plea in what she has a sneaking suspicion is pig Latin and sighs. “Perhaps he hasn’t secured a vessel yet,” he says tiredly. “I would have thought - but I should not have assumed. I apologize, Mary, for wasting your time.”

“You should have more faith, Castiel,” a deep voice says from the edge of the garden. An elderly black man steps out from between the lilac bushes where Mary could _swear_ there’s a solid wooden fence, and smiles gently. “Aid is there for all who ask.”

Cas’s expression is relieved and open. Mary pauses in the midst of reaching for her sword. 

“Joshua,” Cas says. “It’s good to see you.”

“I’m glad you are unharmed as well,” Joshua says gravely. “But ask your question quickly. There are consequences to being seen speaking with you, even for me.”

“Of course,” Cas says. Mary abandons her sword and stands awkwardly to the side, trying to figure out if it’s rude to chip in since Joshua hasn’t acknowledged her. “Joshua, what do you know of the current factions? Is there more than just Bartholomew and Muriel at work?”

“There are some who strive to remain neutral,” Joshua says slowly, “But those numbers are growing smaller every day as the militants seek to increase their numbers.” He pins Cas with a serious look. “In addition to Bartholomew and Muriel there is also Malachi.”

Cas is so startled he takes a half-step back. “Malachi? The anarchist?”

Well, that sounds bad. As quietly as possible, Mary starts edging back towards her sword.

Joshua notices the movement and shakes his head, staring her down. “Castiel, you do have a knack for finding yourself in exalted company.” He doesn’t sound entirely approving of this. “Even for you, the Dust Collec-” he stops in mid-word, stiffening in alarm, and then darts abruptly back into the lilac bushes.

Mary dives for her angel sword even as Cas goes for the banishing sigil on the bench. She barely manages to get a hand on it before angels are pouring into the garden from all directions - over the fences, through the bushes, everywhere. 

Mary rolls to her feet, slashing blindly, and manages to get a lucky hit on an angel reaching for her arm. The angel falls back, crying out in surprise, but before Mary has a chance to follow up on it a hand clamps down on her shoulder. 

“You _dare_ touch one of our blades?”

Mary twists and tries to get away, but the angel’s grip is like iron. He doesn’t even try to take the sword away from her, he just _squeezes_ and she feels her collarbone give way under the pressure. She loses her grip on the angel sword as agony flares in her shoulder and her arm goes numb.

The angel lets go and Mary falls to her knees. If she can get to Cas, if she can get to the banishing sigil, then even with one arm - 

She scrambles to her feet and starts to run, but she can’t even _see_ Cas. He’s vanished under a swarm of angels, overwhelmed by sheer numbers before he ever had a chance to get near the bench with the sigil. The only reason she even knows he’s there is by the shouts of “Betrayer!” and the palpable anger in the angels around him.

There’s no way she’s going to be able to get to him. She switches directions, heading for the bench with the sigil, but an angel steps into her path. She skids and turns, looking for any way out now. If she can get clear, if she can get away, she can call Dean and Sam for help and they can find Cas together and oh God, she doesn’t want to leave Cas behind -

She ducks under one angel’s outstretched arm, narrowly avoids being grabbed by another, and then runs straight into the fist of a third.

It’s like being hit by an iron bar. She hits the ground hard, stunned and barely conscious, and curls up instinctively. It’s like moving underwater - hard and molasses-slow. There’s shouting in the background and she can’t see out of one eye. She thinks her cheekbone might be broken.

The world dribbles back into place. There’s a new angel in the garden now, slight and unprepossessing except for the way the other angels defer to him. Probably Malachi, then.

“Bring the betrayer,” he says. “Is he unconscious?”

The crowd around Cas clears a little. Mary’s vision is blurring in and out, but she can still tell that Cas is a bloody mess. She struggles to pull herself up, to crawl closer to check him out, _anything_ , but all she can manage is to roll onto her side. Cas isn’t moving. She can’t even tell if he’s _breathing_.

Malachi frowns. “I need to question him,” he says testily. “Heal him up enough to keep him from dying.”

One of the angels grudgingly touches Cas’s forehead with two fingers. Mary can’t see any change, but apparently it’s enough for Malachi’s purposes and at least it means that Cas is alive. At least they’ll have to _keep_ him alive for questioning. Every bit of time they can steal is a victory.

“And the human?” one of the angels asks, not even bothering to look in her direction.

Malachi gives her a considering look but doesn’t seem to recognize her. “Castiel does have a fondness for these creatures,” he says dismissively. “Bring her, too. I can kill her if he displeases me.”

“Motherfucking featherduster,” Mary slurs. It’s not a smart thing to do, not by a long shot, but it sort of happens anyway.

“And get her a gag,” Malachi says, not even breaking stride.

They tie her arms behind her back and load her into the back of a van with Cas. She spends a moment trying to get to her cell phone, maybe text someone for help since she can’t speak, but the pain required to twist her arms far enough to reach her front pants pocket nearly makes her pass out. 

Defeated, she uses the car’s movement to inch her way closer to Cas. His face is a bloody mess and he’s still unconscious, but she manages to press her knee against his ribs and feel him breathing. That’s going to have to be good enough.

She fades in and out of consciousness a little, so she’s not sure how long they drive for. Eventually they come to a stop that probably isn’t actually jarring but still manages to make her shoulder and face throb in protest as the ground shifts under her. Instinct makes her try to crawl closer to Cas as soon as the van’s doors open, but the angels separate them effortlessly. A big angel with a scarred face throws her over his shoulder.

Mary screams in agony as her shoulder wrenches around her broken collarbone, but the sound is muffled by her gag and the big angel doesn’t seem to care. Through watering eyes she catches glimpses of stairs and big reinforced doors, and she can hear screams and whimpers from several directions.

A torture dungeon. Malachi has a goddamn _torture dungeon._ It’s such a cliche that she feels disgusted even through her panic and nausea.

The big angel tosses her down in a large stone room filled with various unsavory implements and ties her bound hands to a pillar. To complete the Bond villain vibe, Cas is hung by his wrists from manacles that descend from the ceiling. They chain his feet, too - apparently Mary is just an annoyance, but Cas is dangerous. She’d feel insulted if she wasn’t so terrified.

Maybe this means they won’t be watching her. Maybe if Cas holds their attention firmly enough and she can work her hands free -

“Theo, wake him up,” Malachi says to the big angel. “Everyone else, go about your duties.”

Theo steps forward and does that fingers-to-the-forehead thing again as the cell empties of extraneous angels. Cas wakes up immediately, gasping and pulling back. His eyes flicker over the cell, hesitating just briefly on her. It’s well-hidden, but Mary feels her nerves settle just a bit.

They might be outnumbered, hurt, and hopelessly outmatched, but at least they’re together. She shifts as subtly as possible against her pillar, searching for a weakness in her bonds, and really, _really_ wishes she wasn’t gagged. Cas had said that he’s better at negotiating angelic customs than human ones, but she also knows that he’s always been unusual for an angel. She’s not overwhelmingly confident that he’ll be able to get them out of this if all he can do is talk.

She finally manages to locate a knot with her good hand without making herself black out from the agony in her shoulder, and turns her attention to unraveling it. She’s so absorbed in her task - and in looking as harmless and unworthy of attention as possible - that she nearly misses the beginning of Malachi’s interrogation.

“So,” Malachi says, drawing the word out. “The great Castiel. _Human._ ” He flicks out his angel blade and scratches Cas’s chest where his shirt has fallen open. It’s a light touch, but raises a welt that makes Cas arch and scream in pain. 

Mary grits her teeth and works faster.

“There are a lot of things I can do with a human,” Malachi muses. “Theo can do even more. It’s tempting to take my time about it, but Castiel, what I really want to know is how to reverse Metatron’s spell.”

Cas shakes his head. “I don’t know. I was as surprised by it as you were.”

Malachi scowls and slices another line on Castiel’s chest. “I seriously doubt that. You were in his inner circle.”

“He didn’t have an inner circle!” Cas grits. “He trusted himself and himself only. I was tricked into helping him. I didn’t know what he intended, I swear it.”

Malachi grabs Cas’s shirt and hauls him forward, face tight with rage. “You? You may be many things, Castiel, but you’re no dupe. You’re too powerful for that.” He lets go and leans back, staring Cas down. Cas stares resolutely back. “Fine, then. Let’s try another question. What is Metatron’s weakness?”

Mary feels the knot begin to give a little under her desperate fingers. She really needs to shift slightly to get a better angle, but the last thing she wants to do is call attention to herself. She’ll just have to make do.

“I don’t know Metatron’s weakness,” Cas is saying patiently. “Malachi, what are you trying to do? Slaughtering other angels? Is this what you’ve come to?”

“The humans have a phrase,” Malachi says, his face ugly with hatred. “‘You’re one to talk’. You’ve killed more angels than the rest of us combined, _Castiel_. You massacred legions in Heaven. We don’t even know how many died during the fall from Heaven.”

Something in Cas’s expression must change, because Malachi suddenly leans forward, face alight with terrible glee. “You didn’t know? The angels died as they fell, Castiel. Ezekiel, Sophia, Azriel - screaming as their wings burned and their Grace was torn away, just to land on this miserable _experiment_ of a cesspool. You have so much blood on your hands, Castiel. It will never wash away.” His voice is low and hypnotic. Even Mary, forgotten in the corner of the room, stops wrestling with the knot in her ropes and watches, mesmerised. “But you can tell me. About. _The spell.”_

Cas meets his gaze squarely. “I don’t know anything.”

“Fine.” Malachi sniffs and leans back, suddenly bored. “Theo, kill the human.”

Mary pulls back in alarm. Cas’s expression doesn’t even flicker. “Suit yourself. I only kept her because of her value to Muriel.”

Mary blinks. It’s a desperate move, but you’d never be able to tell from the casual way Cas threw it out there. And holy shit, it’s going to _work_. She can already see Malachi taking an interest. 

If they survive this, she has got to teach Cas how to play poker.

Malachi stares at Cas for a long moment. “Theo,” he says finally, “get what you can out of him. If he refuses to talk, kill him. Ignore the human for now.” He shoots a piercing look in Mary’s direction and then leaves, shutting the door behind him.

One down, one to go. He’s bought her a little time, but he’s still got to save himself. She watches avidly, bonds totally forgotten. This is a side of Cas she’s never seen before, and it’s terrific.

Theo picks up a nasty-looking implement from the table by Cas’s manacles and advances.

“Make it a quick death,” Cas says.

It takes Mary a moment to realise that he’s serious. He doesn’t have a next plan. All he had was enough to buy Mary some time, and that’s spent. He’s just - that’s it. He’s just ready to die.

Dean had said that Cas went too far, cared too much, was ready and willing to die for them. She should have talked to Cas about it. She should have explained what it feels like to be left behind after that kind of sacrifice.

She struggles against her bonds, disregarding pain and subtlety. Theo’s much bigger than she is and he’s armed and uninjured but so help her if she can just get her hands free she will hurt him, she will get him away from Cas and make him _pay_ -

“You have one last chance,” Theo says, but instead of sounding like a threat it sounds like a warning. Mary pauses in her struggle, confused. “I need you to talk to Metatron. I need him to raise me to Heaven. Castiel, I’m a good soldier. I know you have influence. You can do this, can’t you?”

Mary gapes, utterly dumbfounded. Even Cas’s poker face slips just slightly, but he recovers fast and turns it into a carefully pointed glance at the door, as if he’s checking to make sure they can’t be overheard.

“And yet you serve Malachi.”

Theo shakes his head. “No. I mean, I did, but he’s crazy. He’s going to get us all killed. Please, Castiel. I’m valuable. I can be a big help. Maybe I can even talk to him about restoring your Grace.”

Cas gives him a long look. “You don’t think Malachi can win against Bartholomew?”

“I think we’re _all_ going to die,” Theo says, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “I think this war is unwinnable for everyone but Metatron and those who serve him.”

Cas gives the doorway another conspiratorial look. “Well, I do have a way of contacting Metatron, and I’ve helped him in the past. But… no. No, I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”

Mary watches in frank admiration as Theo falls all over himself to convince Cas that he’s a valuable asset, that he’ll work hard. You’d never know that Cas is in chains and Theo’s holding a (mostly forgotten) torture implement to his throat. It’s the world’s most surreal job interview.

“Please, Castiel?” Theo begs.

Cas sighs as if it’s against his better judgement but he’s just such got such a soft spot for eager turncoat torturers. “Well, all right. But you’ll need to unlock me. I need to be able to move freely in order to make contact.”

“Of course!” Theo immediately bends and unlocks Cas’s manacles, even going so far as to take extra care with Cas’s hurt wrist. Mary, practically holding her breath in her efforts to be as unnoticeable as possible, is all but invisible.

“Do you need anything else?” Theo asks, hovering anxiously.

“A little space,” Cas says, and Theo obligingly moves over near the wall. “And you do have something that I need.”

“Whatever you -”

Almost faster than Mary can track, Cas snatches up the abandoned angel sword, slams a surprised Theo back against the wall, and expertly slits his throat.

Theo and Mary both freeze in shock. The cut on Theo’s neck begins to glow with blue-white light, and the next thing Mary knows Cas has tipped his head back and breathed it in. There’s a blinding flash of light, and suddenly Cas is no longer bloody and battered but completely fine. Only the blood on his clothing shows he was ever injured at all. Even the cast has disappeared as if it had never existed.

Theo stares at him in mute horror, mouth working slightly. Cas reaches out and puts a palm on his forehead and _melts his fucking eyeballs._

Mary can feel her breaths starting to hitch in her chest and has to fight to breathe normally. She was raised a hunter. She has seen the horrible things that creatures can do. Cas won’t hurt her. He might be a creature but he won’t hurt her. He might be able to kill with a touch but he won’t hurt her. He won’t. He _won’t_ oh God he just melted someone’s _eyeballs_.

Cas turns away from Theo’s corpse and strides over to Mary. There’s a purposefulness in his movements that wasn’t there before, a confidence that she’s not used to seeing.

The way he rips her bonds apart one-handed is new, too.

_He won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt me._

He reaches for her head and all her pep talks and good intentions vanish in an instant. She flinches back.

From the look on Cas’s face, she might as well have punched him. 

“I would never hurt you, Mary,” he says, stricken. Moving deliberately, as if he’s approaching a terrified animal, he puts both his hands behind his back and leans forward to press a kiss to her forehead.

An indescribable feeling washes through her - warm and comforting at the same time it’s bracingly cold, and it both hurts and feels like a relief. She gasps.

Cas leans back and scoops up his sword, getting to his feet in one smooth movement and avoiding her eyes completely. “Stay close to me. I’ll get you a sword in a moment.”

Mary scrambles to her feet. Her shoulder doesn’t hurt any more and she can see out of both eyes. She’s _healed_ \- not just from her recent injuries but from older ones than that. There’s no ache in her left knee anymore, no twinge in her lower back. Hunting often comes with prematurely aged bodies and Mary’s no exception to that for all that she’d gotten out early.

Except for now, apparently. Now she’s fine.

Mind spinning, she hurries to catch up with Cas. He stops by the door, wavering for a moment, and then turns back with a fiercely determined look on his face.

“I will get you out of this,” he says. “No further harm will come to you. I promise.”

Before she can respond, he throws the door open and strides out.

He does get her a sword very quickly; after he impales the first angel he kicks her fallen sword back towards Mary and moves on to his next opponent without glancing back. Mary clutches it in both hands and doesn’t use it once as she watches him hammer through enemy angels with merciless efficiency. She’s seen him fight before, of course, but that was in the diner as a human against a lot of angels, when he was mostly focused on staying out of their way for as long as possible. Now he’s on their level and his speed and strength turn those moves from quickfire strategy into brutal elimination.

They don’t see Malachi and Cas doesn’t go looking for him. True to his word, he gets Mary out. Liberally spattered with blood, they jog down an empty industrial street until they’re out of sight of the building. 

“Phone?” Cas asks, holding out his hand.

Mary scrambles for it and then stares at it in nonplussed incomprehension. The battery’s dead. Even if she’d managed to get a hold of it in the back of the van it wouldn’t have done much good.

“Payphone,” Cas says, setting off again.

“You look like you just -” Mary starts, and then can’t think of a way to end that sentence that won’t compare what Cas just did to flat-out butchery. He’s soaked in blood. Some of it’s his, but most of it’s not.

Cas glances down at himself, frowns, and suddenly he’s always been standing there in a clean tan overcoat and a pristine white button-down. Mary very nearly loses her hold on her hysterics. It’s just one step over the line into too surreal.

Cas spots a payphone on the corner and makes for it, picking up the handset and dialing without bothering to put in any money. It still works, of course, because apparently that’s the kind of creat- of, of guy he is now. Mary clutches her sword in sweaty hands and keep an eye on their perimeter. At least that’s something she knows how to do and knows must be done.

“Dean?” Cas says as the phone connects. “Dean, there has been a development. Bartholomew is currently opposed by an angel named Malachi and the time for stalemate is at end.” He listens for a moment. “No, we’re both fine. I have disposed of a number of Malachi’s soldiers and retrieved my Grace but that won’t slow him down for long. The war is upon us. Don’t worry - Mary is safe and I will keep her that way.”

He stops, hunching his shoulders suddenly. Mary can’t hear what Dean’s saying - she can barely even hear the sound of his voice, so she isn’t sure if Cas is reacting to something Dean’s said or just to the events of the last few minutes. “No, I - I stole it from another angel. And I was forced to - I, I had to become - never mind. Never mind.” He takes a deep breath. “There’s something else - you said Ezekiel helped to heal Sam, right?”

Mary frowns. ‘Ezekiel’ sounds familiar - not just because Cas mentioned it before when he was telling Mary about her children, but for some other reason. What - 

Oh, right. Malachi had mentioned the name, hadn’t he?

“Well, if you see him again, approach him with caution. Ezekiel died during the fall. I don’t know who that angel was, but it wasn’t Ezek- what? Well, it’s all still theoretical, but with a few days’ work I might be able to make something. I would need to know the angel’s name first - hello? Dean?”

He hangs up, the quiet sound magnified by the confines of the booth and the tense air between them. He doesn’t turn around.

“Cas?” Mary says cautiously after a moment.

“He hung up,” Cas says. “He seemed very angry about Ezekiel’s deception. I should have kept a closer - well. I suppose I couldn’t, at the time.”

He turns, finally. “I absorbed another angel’s Grace,” he says.

Mary abandons her surveillance of the perimeter to look at him. His eyes are wide and shocky. It’s the exact same sickened expression he had when the Rit Zien broke his wrist and he started to go into shock, except now he’s not human. He’s not shaking or going pale, just staring at her with huge blue eyes and an expression that screams ‘make it go away’.

“What does that mean?” Mary says cautiously, sticking her sword awkwardly through her belt.

Cas shakes his head. If he were human, he’d probably be trying not to throw up. “I don’t know. What I - what I did, no one’s ever done that before. I don’t know what it means.”

He shifts, and through the thin fabric of his button-down Mary sees the faint outline of his beloved car t-shirt, the one he wears when he’s feeling vulnerable, and suddenly everything settles around her. Cas might be an angel again, he might be capable of violence and brutality on a level that honestly frightens her, but he’s still _Cas_.

She pulls him into a hug. 

“Shh. It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”

He doesn’t really seem to get the hugging thing too well - he’s leaning into her gratefully, but his arms are just hanging down by his sides. “I can be of more use now,” he says into her shoulder. 

_You were useful before,_ Mary doesn’t say. There’s no reason to make this worse.

“Yeah,” she says instead, stroking his hair. “Yeah, I know. Thank you for protecting me.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They steal a car and start driving south because that’s the direction the car was pointed in when they took it. Apparently Cas’s new powers don’t come with flight or teleportation or whatever it is, which he apologizes for several times.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mary says. “We’re a lot better off than we were this morning, okay? We’ve got information, we’ve got your new super-skills, we’re fine, okay?” It’s too dangerous to go back to the car so they don’t have their weapons or supplies or even their clothes, but they’ve started from scratch before. They’re still better off than they were then. Hell, they even found a phone charger tucked away in the glove compartment that fits their dead phone.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Cas repeats dutifully. Mary smiles at him. Both of them pretend it’s a reassuring exchange.

Her phone rings. She fumbles for it one-handed, not bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?”

“Mom?” 

It’s Dean’s voice, but so shaken and choked that it’s barely recognizable. "Dean, what's wrong? Are you okay?" 

“Mom. I really messed up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, from here on out I’m guessing that the main storyline of the show’s canon is going to start having more of an effect on this fic, since promos indicate that Cas will be back in the bunker with the main cast. I’d like to keep to a chapter a week, as I’ve been (more or less unsuccessfully) doing so far, but depending on how cliffhanger-y the show’s plotlines get I might have to let two weeks of episodes go by at a time so I don’t Joss myself into a plot tangle. 
> 
> I also don’t want this story to turn into just a retelling of Season 9, because that would be boring. I have Mary and Cas’s story plotted out in my head, but of course there’s no telling how many (more) monkey wrenches the show’s going to throw into my brilliant plans. My tumblr is [here](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/) and I’ll be having all plot-related meltdowns in the tag ‘[fic: hail mary](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-hail-mary/chrono)’ if anyone wants the behind-the-scenes experience. ;D
> 
> Also also, for those of you who are following this fic but not watching Season 9, I will try my darndest to keep writing the story in a way that doesn’t make canon knowledge a requirement. If I start to get confusing, let me know!
> 
> (ETA: Hey, look - with this chapter this is officially the longest story I've ever written! WHAT HAVE I DONE.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: I’m pretty sure APBs don’t work this way. Also, there’s some mild blood stuff in this one.  
> SPOILERS: Big ones for 9x10 ‘Road Trip’, baby ones for 9x04 'Slumber Party'.  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Existing canon, mostly.  
> NEW TAGS: Gadreel, Crowley

“Mom?”

It’s Dean’s voice, but so shaken and choked that it’s barely recognizable. Mary’s heart thuds painfully. “Dean, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Mom, I really messed up.”

She swerves onto the shoulder and cuts the engine. Beside her, Cas sits up straighter in alarm. “Okay, baby, I’m here. Are you somewhere safe?”

“I - yes. Yes, I’m safe.”

“Good. That’s good. Is Sammy with you?”

There’s a sharp, pained inhale on the other end of the phone, and then Dean says, “No. He’s… alive.”

That raises more questions than it answers, frankly. Mary shoots Cas a worried look. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Another silence. “Put me on speaker phone. I don’t want to have to tell it twice.”

His voice sounds steadier, but much duller, as if he’s given up. Mary adjusts the phone accordingly, placing it on the console between her and Cas.

“Okay. You’re on speaker.”

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says obediently.

Dean doesn’t respond to Cas’s overture, going straight into his explanation instead as if he’s afraid he’ll lose his nerve. “Sammy was doing some trials a few months ago - Cas can you fill you in on those - and they left him pretty messed up. He was, um, he was dying, and I couldn’t - I, the angels had fallen, and Cas was - and I prayed for one of them to come fix him up. A guy named Ezekiel came to do the job, but he said Sam was too badly hurt and he’d have to possess him to do it.”

Cas sucks in a breath, as if he wants to ask a question, but Mary shakes her head at him. It sounds like it’s causing Dean actual pain to get through this. The last thing she wants to do is prolong it or derail him before he gets to the end.

“So I - I tricked Sammy into saying yes. But, um, it turns out he wasn’t really Ezekiel, and he - he’s taken Sam somewhere.”

Mary’s stomach clenches in fear and she has to take even breaths to keep from saying something and interrupting Dean before he’s done. Dean had said ‘taken’, so Sam’s still alive. And he’d said Sam was possessed by Eze- by, by whoever the angel was, and angels don’t harm or abandon their vessels willingly, right? It’s hard to find new vessels, so they’ll take care of the ones they have, won’t they? That buys them time. That keeps Sam safe, for a given value of safe. 

It’s okay. It’s enough to work with. It’s okay.

“And, and killed Kevin,” Dean finishes, his voice breaking. Mary frowns - this is the first she’s heard of a Kevin, but from the shocked look on Cas’s face he’s definitely someone she _should_ know.

“Dean, did he say who he was?” Cas asks, and this time Mary doesn’t try to shush him.

“No. He just left. But, he did - he had a card with Kevin’s name on it. He left it by the - he left it.”

 _By the body._ Mary frowns. The question is - did he leave it as some kind of killer’s calling card, or was it given to him by someone else? Does someone else have designs on Sam - Muriel or Bartholomew or one of the others? Probably not Malachi, he would have used it as leverage when he was interrogating Cas...

“Are the tablets safe?” Cas asks. 

“He took them.”

Cas makes a low sound of dismay. Mary opens her mouth to ask what these tablets are and why they’re so important, but Dean cuts her off.

“Mom,” he says, his voice breaking again. “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

Mary grabs the phone from the console and holds it close to her mouth, as if proximity to the device will translate to proximity to Dean himself.

“Sweetheart, stay where you are,” she says firmly, carried forward by instinct and habit more than any kind of actual plan. “I’m coming to get you. I love you and everything is going to be fine. Do you hear me?” This is a long way from comforting a four-year-old Dean who’s just woken from a nightmare, but she’d been pretty good at -

Well. Actually, this probably still a lot like that. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean says automatically. “But Mom -”

“No buts, Dean,” Mary says. Angelic battles and mysterious tablets might be beyond her expertise, but her children are hurting and there is nothing in existence that can keep her from trying to help them. “Are you at the bunker? We can be there in…” she does some rapid mental calculations, and then subtracts several hours from the total to account for the amount of speeding she’s planning to do. “We’ll be there in five hours. Will you be safe until then?”

“Yeah. _I’ll_ be fine,” Dean says bitterly.

“Okay.” Mary starts the car and pulls back onto the road. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you? We have a charger and the speaker’s pretty good.”

“No,” Dean says. “No, that’s okay. Concentrate on driving. I’ll see you tonight.”

The phone goes dead before she has a chance to say goodbye. Cas grabs instinctually for the dashboard as she floors the accelerator, and shoots her a worried look.

“All right, Cas, fill in the blanks,” Mary says. She can feel calm settling into her bones, the kind of calm that takes over when she has one thing that absolutely needs to be done and everything else can go hang until she’s done it. Her mom described it once as a double-edged sword, since as a mindset it’s useful but can lead to some pretty impressive collateral damage, but it’s the weapon Mary’s got right now and she’s too much of a pragmatist not to take advantage of it. Cas’s re-angeling throws a monkey wrench into her ability to guess how he’s doing, but after the day she’s had she needs all the help she can get in order to keep going.

Cas is still watching her carefully. “Now, Cas,” she says, firm and commanding rather than angry. “Trials, tablet, Kevin. Go.”

Cas’s spine straightens automatically. “The tablets are components of the Word of God. It’s unclear at the moment how many of them exist, but I’ve seen ones for demons, angels, and the Leviathan. They were dictated by God to his scribe, Metatron, and were scattered across the world for use in the defense of mankind. Tablets can only be read by a prophet of the Lord, in this case Kevin. The demon tablet contained instructions on how to permanently close Hell. The angel tablet was assumed to do the same thing, but as it turned out those instructions were to cast the angels out -” he stops for a moment, guilt and shame all over his face. 

Mary feels sympathy for him, but what’s done is done. “And Sam tried to close Hell?”

Cas nods and goes on. “Yes. The trials took a great toll on him. We realised near the end that they could only be completed with Sam’s death, which Dean objected to. As did I,” he adds quickly, glancing at her. “Therefore Hell is open, the angels are cast out, and one managed to trick its way into Sam.”

“And Kevin’s dead,” Mary says.

Cas sighs. “Yes. I can only assume that was for extra insurance, since Metatron took the tablets anyway. Kevin was -” he flounders for a moment, frowning at his lap. “He didn’t want to be a prophet. It cost him dearly. But he was a brave and stubborn young man, and I very much regret his loss.”

“What does this mean for us, strategically speaking?”

Cas gives her a strange look, but answers the question. “Unclear at the moment. The loss of the tablets and - and Kevin means that our chances of reversing Metatron’s spell and returning the angels to Heaven are considerably reduced.” He wavers for a second, and then steadies himself. “There may also be additional information on the tablets that Metatron either needs or simply doesn’t want us to have. He seemed to have a good memory of the angel tablet, so the second scenario is more likely.” He hesitates. “Mary, my sigil research is still in the car. It’s less of an immediate issue now that I have my Grace back, but it would still be a great benefit to us.”

Unfortunate, but not their biggest problem right now. “We’ll have to stop for gas before we get to the bunker. We can get you some paper then. You’ll have a few hours to work on it while I drive.”

Cas is silent for a long moment. Mary sighs. “What, Cas?”

It takes him a moment to respond. “This is a moment in which you are being very like Dean,” he says finally. His tone is completely neutral.

“Is that good or bad?” 

“It’s illuminating.”

Mary rubs her forehead. “I’m sorry about your research, Cas, but do you agree that getting to the bunker is more important right now?”

“Yes,” Cas says without hesitation. “Had I been alone, I would have abandoned everything to help as well. This drive you have, this singular focus? It’s what Dean does when Sam is in danger.”

Well, the meaning of that is clear enough, although it’s delicately put by Cas’s usual standards. “You think I’m angry with him.”

“I’ve considered the possibility,” Cas says dryly, and Mary smiles despite herself. It feels bitter on her mouth, but it’s still a smile.

“Have you heard the phrase ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’?” she asks.

Cas hums. “Yes, and I understand it. My house is also glass, Mary. I’ve only told you a few of the terrible things I’ve done.”

Mary unclenches her hand from the steering wheel long enough to pat his leg. She’d heard what Malachi said during the interrogation, and Cas and Dean have both hinted at enough things for her to build a pretty good picture of Cas’s past. “You can tell me if you want, Cas, but all I need to know is who you are now.” She frowns. “Speaking of which, how does the vessel thing work for you? You were human but you absorbed that angel’s Grace - does that make you your own vessel now?”

Cas shrugs. “I stopped understanding the existence of my vessel many years ago. This body did originally belong to a human with his own life and his own family, and for a time I could feel him within it, but there have been a number of unexplained things that have happened to me since then. Your explanation makes as much sense as any.”

Neither of them can think of anything to say after that, although Mary’s sure she should probably be using the time to question Cas about what happened in Malachi’s torture dungeon or what to expect once they reach the bunker. After a while Cas turns on the radio and they drive the rest of the way listening to songs Mary remembers from before she died.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They arrive at the bunker several hours after dark, and from what she can see it pretty much consists of a big metal door set into a hillside. She thinks there might be some kind of structure above-ground as well, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.

Cas reaches for the door handle, and Mary experiences a moment of panic through her calm.

“How’s my hair?” she blurts, and winces. “Never mind. Irrelevant. Let’s go.”

“It’s blonde?” Cas says tentatively.

She laughs, the tension dissipating a bit. 

“How is _my_ hair?” Cas asks, still looking worried. 

“Your hair looks great, sweetie,” Mary says, smoothing it down for him. She’d forgotten it in the rush to get to the bunker, but of course Cas would be nervous about coming back here after the way he’d left. She feels a little bad for not checking in with him sooner. “We both look terrific.” 

In truth, they’re both pretty much a mess after the day they’ve had, but worrying about appearances at this point is patently ridiculous given the situation at hand. Mary hadn’t even realised she still had angel blood on her shirt until she was filling up the tank at the gas station.

Cas nods, reassured, and then opens the door.

The bunker is a lot bigger than Mary had expected. She’s been imagining something like the fallout shelters that had still been common when she was a child, low-ceilinged and relentlessly utilitarian, but this is more like an upscale club from the 1930s. Everything from the inlaid floors to the cavernous ceilings is art deco and warmly lit.

There’s no immediate sign of Dean, but Cas descends the metal staircase and crosses the main room without hesitation and Mary trails along behind, trying not to think too hard about the fact that she’s finally about to meet her grown-up son face to face. She wishes there had been some way to see a picture or something of him beforehand. Does he look like John? Like her? Oh, God, she hopes he didn’t end up with her father’s ears. That would just be cruel.

They enter a library. Mary has a vague impression of old books on gorgeous wooden shelves, but she’s mostly focused on the figure packing a duffel bag with hunting supplies at the far end of the big study table. He’s broad-shouldered and tall and when he turns to face them she sees that he’s handsome, too.

And then she actually takes in his face, and stops dead. “Dean _Van Halen?”_

He opens his mouth and closes it, obviously thrown, but it is. It _definitely_ is. It’s the drifter from all those years before, the one who’d shown up out of nowhere with vague doom-laden warnings and then vanished right after her parents had died.

He and Cas exchange awkward looks. “Dude, you didn’t tell her?” Dean mutters. Cas winces.

“Um,” Dean says, shifting his weight. “So, there was this time-travel thing.”

Vague doom-laden warnings about how she shouldn’t get out of bed the night the demon came for Sam. And killed her. “Oh, wow,” Mary says, putting her hand to her head. She feels a little dizzy. “Okay. Wow. Okay.” Her son had _time-traveled_ in an attempt to prevent her from ruining their lives, and she’d still screwed it up. That’s… quite a guilt trip. That’s like a guilt vacation. A _permanent_ one.

“Mom?”

It’s also totally irrelevant right now. “Yes, fine. No, I’m okay.” She pushes it aside and forces a smile. “Come here and let me look at you! Gosh, you grew up tall.”

Dean steps forward, a little hesitantly, and Mary feels her smile become more real. She wraps her arms around him and breathes in deep. He smells like fabric softener and gun oil instead of baby shampoo and peanut butter, but when she cards her fingers through his hair he rests his head on her shoulder. He’s a good hugger.

She gives herself a minute of this, Dean warm and solid and held safely in her arms, and more than anything she’d like to stay that way forever. But Sam’s predicament is a constant buzz in the back of her mind so she loosens her hold and lets Dean lean back, cupping his face with her hands. His eyes are red-rimmed and exhausted but he looks shyly pleased by the embrace.

“You _did_ get my hair,” she says, touching it gently. Her throat is awfully tight, but she can’t stop smiling. “Your dad kept saying it would get darker when you were older, but I knew.”

“Sammy’s did, a little,” Dean says, and his expression wobbles. “Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t keep him safe.”

“Hey.” She slides her hands down to his shoulders and gives him a tiny shake. “You did everything you could, and no one can ask more than that. Okay?”

He nods, but she can tell he’s not convinced yet. From her own experience she knows that it will take more than just words to really convince him, but at least they’re a start.

Cas shifts ever-so-slightly in the background, and Dean coughs and backs up a little, looking embarrassed. Mary gives his shoulder one last squeeze and then pushes him towards Cas. 

Dean turns away reluctantly and frowns. “Dude, what’s wrong with your hair? You look like a fu- freaking Mormon.” He reaches out and tousles Cas’s hair, utterly destroying Mary’s attempts to neaten it and returning it to the state of bedhead it had been in when she first met him. “I like the coat, though. What happened to your tie?”

Cas looks ridiculously pleased by the gesture, and Mary resigns herself to his messy hair from here on out. He’d looked so _nice_ with it combed and parted. “To be honest, I never really understood the purpose of the tie.”

Dean laughs and shakes his head. “Of course you didn’t.”

She feels bad about breaking the moment, but now that she’s sure Dean is safe her priority is Sam. Mary gestures to the bag at the end of the table. “Were you going somewhere? Do you have a lead on Sam?”

Dean’s shoulders slump. “No,” he says viciously. “I’ve got nothing. I don’t know how to find him and unless Cas has a way to kick angels out of their vessels without having the human host do it, I’ve got no way to give that dick the boot. All I know how to do -” he stops abruptly, gaze sliding towards the angel sword poking out of his duffel.

 _Is hunt_ , Mary thinks, and swallows hard. 

“I’m sorry, there’s no external way to separate them without a Heavenly mandate,” Cas says quietly. His eyes flicker towards her, a minute gesture that he stops almost before it starts, but Mary gets the picture. If he’d had the time to finish his sigil work, or if they knew the angel’s name, maybe he’d have a better plan. “But Sam’s will is very strong. He’ll survive until we find something, and it’s possible that he will realise on his own that something is amiss and be able to cast the angel out.”

Well, that means that there’s a possibility of the angel… killing? Permanently suppressing? Burning Sam out? That’s spectacularly unreassuring.

“Okay,” Mary says, ruthlessly burying her apprehension. “What do we have, what do we need?”

Dean blinks at her, but Cas says immediately “We need to find Sam. We need to get the angel out.”

“So finding Sam is first,” Mary says. They can trap him and hide him once they have them, but the longer he’s gone the harder everything else will become and the greater the likelihood that whoever is pulling the angel’s strings will reach his goal, whatever that might be. “And then we can worry about finding a way to communicate with him and make sure he knows what he needs to do. What do we have?”

Dean straightens. “We have the King of Hell in the dungeon.”

There are so many things about that sentence that Mary doesn’t understand it’s almost farcical, but Cas looks intrigued.

“Crowley was able to access Samandriel’s base code,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s possible we could use the same technique to bring Sam forward. But, Dean, you know what Crowley’s like - everything comes with a price and he’s always got his own ends in mind. Besides, we still have to find Sam.”

“I bet Crowley has a way to find angels,” Dean says. “Cas, we don’t have a choice. Crowley’s all we’ve got.”

“Maybe for contacting Sam,” Mary says, although she’s really still kind of hung up on what a terrible idea making deals with the _King of Hell_ is. Seriously, have they learned _nothing?_ “But why don’t you just ask Jody to put out an APB on Sam’s car?”

They stare at her. Mary shrugs, a little defensively. “Sam took the car, right?” There hadn’t been another one parked out front when they arrived, and it seems kind of silly for a bunker to have a garage.

“Um. Yes,” Dean says, looking a little sheepish. “That’s, um, that’s a good idea.”

Good,” Mary says. Any step away from demon deals is a good one. She might not know much, but she definitely knows _that_. “I’ll call her. You two brainstorm.”

She steps back out of the library and pulls out her cell phone. Jody answers on the second ring.

“Hey, Mary - you guys know when you’ll be in Sioux Falls?”

Mary winces. “Oh… no, sorry, something else came up and we’re not going to make it. I need to ask you a favor.”

“Winchesters,” Jody sighs. “Okay, let me have it.”

Mary smiles a little. “I promise - no Roman goddesses or serial-killing angels.” Well, probably. The card that the angel left behind with Kevin’s name on it indicates more of a contract killer. “We just need you to put out an APB on Sam and Dean’s car.” Which, she’s just realising, she doesn’t know the make, model, or license plate of.

“You’re lucky I’m pulling a night shift,” Jody says, and Mary can hear typing in the background. Jody seems to know the information already, which is a relief. “What happened, it get stolen? I bet Dean’s flipping out.”

“Something like that,” Mary sighs. “Look, we don’t want the car stopped, we just need it found.”

“Mm-hm,” Jody says. “Okay - it’s in there. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“Thanks, Jody,” Mary says. “Take care.”

She slips the phone into her pocket and turns back towards the library, but before she reaches the stairs she hears Dean say “- freaking sorry I made you leave, Cas.”

Mary stops dead. They can’t do anything for Sam until Jody calls back, and there is no way she’s going to interrupt this conversation. She doesn’t know how badly Dean needs to get his apology out, but she does know how badly Cas needs to hear it. He buries it in logic and his dedication to helping her, but being sent away had obviously hurt him deeply. His willingness to absorb another angel’s Grace would have told her that even if his borderline obsession with being helpful hadn’t done it already.

“I understand your reasons, Dean,” Cas says softly.

Dean gives a broken little laugh. “Yeah, my reasons were frigging _great_. Eze- the, _whoever_ he is said ‘kick Cas out or I’m gone’, and I just went ahead and did it. You deserved more than that, man. You deserved _help_. God, I’m such a stupid asshole.”

Mary aches at the disgust in Dean’s voice. She knows how that kind of self-loathing feels and it breaks her heart to hear it in her son.

“You were trusting,” Cas says. “Just like I was, just like Mary was.” His voice raises just a little bit, and Mary winces. She’s pretty sure Cas knows she’s eavesdropping. “You trusted that what you did would help those you loved, and you were taken advantage of for it, but you did it for the right reasons. You were trying to protect your family.”

He definitely knows she’s eavesdropping. Mary clenches her fists and stares at the ground. She understands what Cas is saying, but she also understands Dean’s anguish. It doesn’t count as protecting your family when all you do is put them in greater danger as a result.

“Maybe so, and maybe I was just a dumbass,” Dean says. “But you’re family too, Cas, and so was Kevin, and you both had to pay for what I did.”

Cas falls silent, whether because he’s run out of arguments or because he doesn’t know how to respond to being called family, and Mary takes that as her cue to bump her foot against the stairs and then come up them like no one ever taught her how to walk quietly. She enters the library just in time to see Cas round the end of the table and kiss Dean on the forehead.

“What the hell.” Dean says after a long moment.

Cas frowns at Dean’s uncomforted expression and gives Mary a confused look.

Mary quickly runs through her possible responses and decides that the best option is a total nonreaction. At least when she was alive, hunters could be a pretty macho bunch, and she doesn’t want Dean to overreact and make the situation into a _thing._ “Jody’s on it,” she says casually, leaning up against the table. “She’ll let us know when she’s got something.”

Cas nods and goes back to his chair. Dean glances between the two of them and frowns. “Did you teach him that?”

“I told her we were just trying to find the car - the last thing we need is for some poor beat cop to wander across an angel assassin,” Mary continues doggedly. At least the shock of the kiss seems to have momentarily shaken Dean out of his guilt trip, which can only be a good thing. Mary’s all too aware of how that kind of poisonous despair can drive a person into poor decision-making.

Dean leans closer. “ _Mom_ ,” he hisses, “you can’t do that, he has _personal space issues.”_

Mary rolls her eyes at him. “So, did you guys come up with anything for talking to Sam?”

Cas eyes them warily for a moment, and then apparently decides that whatever their problem is can take a backseat to the situation at hand. “Unfortunately, much of what I can do is limited by not knowing the angel’s name. I can try to rework one of our traps, but it will take time and it will likely be very theoretical.”

Dean shoots her one last warning look and leans forward. “Can you find his name? You were able to find Balthazar that one time when he was stealing souls.”

Cas is silent for a long moment. “Possibly,” he says finally. “Then I was able to find Balthazar because I could follow the claiming mark on the boy’s soul. I don’t have that now, but I do have two people who are blood relations and care for Sam very deeply. It _might_ be possible to trick the spell into doing what I require of it, but it will be very draining for me.”

“Dangerously draining?” Mary asks, eyes narrowed. Cas shrugs.

“Would it be easier to do once we captured him?” Dean asks.

“Well, yes, assuming it’s an angel I don’t recognize on sight,” Cas hedges. “But if the angel damages Sam as it leaves, or if it hasn’t healed him enough to survive on his own, I won’t have enough power left to do anything.”

Dean swears and throws himself back in his chair. “For fuck’s _sake,”_ he says viciously, and then “Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s okay, honey, I know that word already,” Mary says absently. She doesn’t like the idea of talking to this Crowley, and she’s emphatically aware of the unexpected consequences that come from deals with demons, but it’s starting to look like they’re out of options. _Dammit._ “So. Would a demon know something we don’t?”

Cas scowls. “It’s possible,” he says reluctantly. “And Crowley definitely knows how to find an angel’s base coding, which we might be able to use to contact Sam.”

Dean rubs his eyes wearily. “All right. Well, it’s not like we can do anything until we can find him, and I’d like to get some shuteye before I start trading insults with Crowley.”

“Sounds good,” Mary says. “Do you have a spare shirt I can borrow? We had to ditch all of our supplies and I have blood on mine.” She can rinse it out, of course, but waiting for it to dry will be a pain in the butt.

Dean narrows his eyes at them. “Malachi?”

“Torture dungeon,” Mary says disgustedly. “It was such a cliche.”

“He didn’t even torture me personally,” Cas complains. “He had a minion do it.”

Dean looks from one of them to the other. “Was it a bad idea letting you two travel together?” he says suspiciously.

“Shirt please, Dean,” Mary reminds him.

“Right.” He pushes himself up from the table. “I think Charlie left some stuff here when she went to Oz. She wouldn’t mind loaning it to you.” He gives Mary a once-over. “You’re taller, but I think the shirts should still work.”

“Oz,” Mary says flatly.

“With Dorothy,” Dean says, and Mary decides that she’s really got enough confusion in her life without trying to figure out things that don’t directly affect her.

Dean takes her down into the living quarters and shows her where the bathrooms are and where she can put her head down for a while. He seems content to leave the issue of Cas’s socialization alone for the time being, which Mary is grateful for. She’s exhausted and they’re both worried - the possibility of it turning into an overwrought fight to relieve tension is pretty good, and maybe she’s selfish but she’d like a few days of getting to know her son before she has to argue with him. 

The mysterious Charlie has indeed left a bag behind, and after some severely confused contemplation Mary chooses the most subtle t-shirt she can find, a black one with ‘meh’ written on it in white. She’s not sure what it means, but she’s too tired to care. 

She tumbles into bed fully-clothed, too tired to wrangle something resembling pajamas and too mentally exhausted to face showering, even though Dean had said the water pressure is to die for. It’s been a busy day, after all, between the torture and the marathon driving and meeting Dean in person for the first time.

And God, what is she going to do about Dean? His pain goes so far beyond skinned knees or a bumped head. This is nothing that a Sesame Street band-aid and a bowl of tomato-rice soup can make better.

Worse, she can understand exactly why he made the choice he did. As an outsider, it’s easy for her to think it would have been better for him to bring Cas in on the plan or to let Sammy make the choice for himself, but she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on, does she? She’d made plenty of choices for her entire family without letting them know anything about what was at stake, and in the end every single one of them had blown up in her face.

She has no idea how Dean’s going to handle it if they can’t save Sammy, or even if they _can_ save him. She doesn’t know what Sammy’s reaction will be to having been possessed, or if it will damage his relationship with Dean. She doesn’t even really understand what their relationship is or what they’ve been through. She has no idea how to parent them as adults.

It’s a long time before she actually manages to fall asleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She’s woken from a vague, confusing string of dreams in the early hours of the morning by Jody calling with news about Sam. As soon as she hangs up she rolls straight out of bed and goes back to the library.

Cas is still sitting at the end of the table, surrounded by papers and books and looking rumpled and frustrated. Dean’s asleep in one of the armchairs but wakes up as soon as she enters.

“Somerset, Pennsylvania,” Mary says. “He ran a red light. Cas, what’s all this?”

Cas throws down his pen in irritation. “An exercise in futility,” he says sourly. “I have been attempting to alter an existing spell that allows the Rit Zien to separate the energies of an angel and their vessel for healing purposes, but I have made very little progress.” He picks up a piece of paper with a complicated sigil on it. “The most this will manage - _if_ it works - is to slightly lessen the hold the angel has on Sam’s perceptions. The effect would be negligible.” He balls it up and hurls it across the room.

Dean looks startled. “Cas, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cas says stiffly, getting to his feet and stalking towards the door. “I apologize for losing my temper. We should go speak with Crowley.”

“He has kind of a thing about not being able to help,” Mary explains as soon as Cas is out of earshot.

“He does?” Dean says, confused, and then stops dead when he realizes that Mary’s preparing to follow him down to the mysterious dungeon. “Whoa, wait, I think you should stay up here. Crowley’s dangerous.”

Mary watches him carefully. She understands his reasoning, such as it can be called: Sam’s in danger, so his protective instincts are on overdrive, so he can’t bear the thought of putting anyone _else_ in danger. “I’ll stay up here if you think my being there will get in the way of the negotiating,” she says finally. “But I’m coming with you to get Sam.”

Dean frowns. “Mom, that’s going to be even more -”

“We should go speak with Crowley _now,”_ Cas calls pointedly up the stairs.

“We can argue later,” Mary says. “I’ll pack up the gear while you’re talking. Dean?” she calls as he turns away.

“What?”

“Just… be careful? Don’t give anything away that you can’t spare.”

He nods, his expression softening a little. “I will.”

“That means your soul!” Mary calls after him.

She’s not quite a nervous wreck while the boys are downstairs, but she’s a lot less efficient at getting the supplies together than usual. She trusts Cas to keep Dean safe and she trusts Dean to… well, actually, given how much blame Dean’s shouldering about Sam’s situation, she’s not sure she trusts Dean not to do something desperate. And if Crowley’s anything like the other demons she’s come across, he’ll be able to smell that a mile away.

Still. She trusts Cas. Even more now that she knows he can hold his own in a verbal battle if he has to.

By the time the boys come back upstairs with a fairly nondescript man in a dark suit and elaborate handcuffs, Mary has all the supplies packed and she’s just finished making sandwiches.

“Crusts off on mine, sweetheart,” the man says, grinning at her in a spectacularly obnoxious way.

Mary ignores him completely, which she’s discovered to be the most aggravating response to a man who’s deliberately trying to get her attention. “Dean, anything else you want to bring?”

Dean glances over the supplies. “One thing.”

The one thing turns out to be a heavy chair, the kind that shows up in horror movies with sadistic dentists. It’s big and articulated and has a lot of restraints, and if it wasn’t for Cas’s angelic strength and Crowley’s (coerced) demonic help, there wouldn’t be any chance of getting it out of the bunker and into the back of Mary’s car.

While Cas and Crowley are struggling with the chair - Cas glowering, Crowley needling him - Dean and Mary have it out as quietly and gently as possible.

“It’s going to be _dangerous,_ Mom,” Dean says urgently. “I won’t be able to focus if I’m worrying about you too. And we might have to - there might be some stuff that - Sam wouldn’t want you to see him like this, okay?”

“Dean,” Mary says, calm but firm, “Sam is my son, and he’s in trouble. There isn’t a power on this Earth that can stop me from trying to help him. Not even you.” She tilts her head, following his gaze as he tries to look away. “Hey. I know you want to protect me, and that’s sweet, but it’s also unnecessary and frankly a little condescending. You don’t think Sam needs all the help he can get right now? All the people who love him?”

She can see him wavering. He’s too overwhelmed by everything that’s happened to really put up a fight. “How about I make you a deal,” she offers. It seems to be a day for deals, although Dean did manage to secure Crowley’s help for nothing more than a chance to get out of the dungeon. “You and Cas and Crowley can collect Sam, and I’ll set up all the equipment. That way by the time I’m anywhere near him he’s contained.” It’s not as much of a compromise as it sounds, but it will give him a graceful way out. 

He nods reluctantly. “Sammy’ll probably be, uh… he’ll probably be pretty pissed at me when he snaps out of it,” he says. “It’s probably a good idea to have you there for that, I guess. But Mom, if something goes wrong, you run. Got it? I tell you to run, you run.”

Like hell she will. “Okay.”

Dean takes a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s light this candle.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They drop her off at an abandoned warehouse outside of Somerset after one of the most intensely annoying car rides Mary’s ever survived. Although Mary manages to keep her poise and her temper, Crowley turns out to have enough familiarity with Dean and Cas to push their buttons with relentless accuracy. He figures out who Mary is within the first ten minutes of the drive and that subject keeps him entertained for the first half of the trip at least, until Dean threatens to lock him in the trunk with an open bottle of holy water between his legs.

It’s with a guilty sense of relief that Mary watches them head off and turns her attention to setting up the equipment. She’s not wild about sending them after Sam without her, but _dear Lord_ the silence is welcome.

Before he’d left, Cas had done something to her ribs that made them sting like crazy, which is something she hadn’t even been aware that bones could do. It made Dean look a little happier about leaving her there, though, so she lets it go. She remembers what Cas had said about burning warding symbols into Dean and Sam’s ribs and figures that’s probably what it was.

She wrestles the chair into place and drags over what furniture remains in the warehouse for the rest of them to use. She finds a table for the tray of what she’s resolutely thinking of as ‘surgical instruments’ and sets about warding and salting the room, only to remember that they’re going to have to be able to bring both a demon and two angels into the room so most of her warding will have to be dismantled.

She sits down in one of the rusty folding chairs to wait, then feels too restless and goes to walk the perimeter. She doesn’t like the unprotected feel of the warehouse, and she doesn’t like sitting and waiting around with no idea of how Dean and Cas are faring or if they’ve even located Sammy. She doesn’t like putting all her hope in a demon. She wants something to _do_.

She stops, her gaze falling on the dentist chair. Technically, there is something she can try. Cas had said it wouldn’t work, but it’s worth a shot, right?

She digs his collection of sigil papers out of the duffel bag and hunts through them until she finds the crumpled-up one. It’s a complicated design, particularly given the inaccuracy of fingerpainting with blood, but it’s not impossible. She slices her forearm and gets to work, crawling under the dentist chair to draw a sigil on the underside of the seat where it won’t be rubbed off. Cas had said that it would only have a weak effect, so she puts one behind the back panel, the headrest, both arm rests, and the leg restraints as well - seven in total, which feels right somehow. 

As she paints, she thinks about Sammy: as an infant in her arms, as a baby in his playpen, as a young man on the phone. She’s never had a particular aptitude for magic, but she figures it can’t hurt.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Just when Mary thinks she’s really, truly going to lose her mind, Dean calls to let her know that they’re nearly to her and have Sam in custody. She spends the next several minutes in a flutter of nervous anticipation, and is hovering anxiously by the foot of the stairs when they come in.

She doesn’t get a really good impression of her youngest son until he’s in the chair, since most of what she can see of him up until then is a tall man with shaggy brown hair slung between Cas and a loudly complaining Crowley. She watches as Cas and Dean get Sam situated and strap him in. He’s handsome, even when he’s unconscious, and although it’s hard to judge she thinks he might be even taller than Dean. (Granted, Crowley’s inability to refer to him as anything other than ‘Moose’, ‘Gigantor’, or ‘the Hulk’ has a hand in forming that last impression.)

Mostly, he’s here. He’s actually _here_. She has both of her babies in one room and while they might not technically be safe, they’re _here._ Right in front of her.

Dean drops back to stand by her. “Mom? You okay?”

Mary forces back her emotions and resolutely does not cry. “He needs a haircut,” she sniffles, which is the first thing that pops into her head that Dean won’t find to be embarrassingly mushy.

Dean does a double-take. Mary winces apologetically.

“Shall we get on with it before I die of sugar poisoning?” Crowley says with acid politeness. “Come on, Touched By, I promise I’ll keep the hickeys to a minimum.”

Cas glares, but extends a hand over Sam’s face. There’s a bright white light that Mary remembers from when he absorbed Theo’s Grace, and then Sam’s eyes open.

“Castiel,” he says evenly.

Not Sam’s eyes, Mary reminds herself. The angel’s eyes.

“I don’t recognize you,” Cas says, frowning. “What is your name?”

The angel stares back at him and doesn’t speak.

“Charming,” Crowley says, gathering up his spell ingredients. “All right, on three.” He lights the contents of the bowl on fire, and then he and Cas each clap a hand to one of Sa- the angel’s shoulders.

The angel goes rigid, his head thrown back. There are cords standing out on his neck as he tries to fight the spell, and then he grits out _“Gadreel.”_

Mary glances over at Dean, who shrugs. Crowley doesn’t look any more illuminated than they do.

Cas, on the other hand, looks utterly stunned. He takes a half-step back, letting go of Gadreel’s shoulder, and then without any warning he snarls and lunges for Gadreel’s throat.

After an instant of flatfooted surprise, Dean grabs Cas around the chest and tries to wrestle him back. Cas doesn’t budge, still intent on strangling the life out of Gadreel. Mary pushes past an amused Crowley and forces her way between them, trying with all her might to shove them apart.

“Sam’s body!” she yells. “Sam’s body, Cas!”

Cas abruptly allows himself to be dragged back a few steps, breathing harshly. Mary grabs his wrists and pushes them in close to his chest so he’ll have a harder time getting any leverage.

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean says, his arms still locked around Cas’s torso. “Who the hell is Gadreel?”

“He was a guard,” Cas says angrily. “He was _the_ guard, the one posted at the gates of Eden who let the serpent in. He let Lucifer in and everything else came from that. The war in Heaven, the apocalypse, everything we’ve done, everything we’ve suffered - he ruined _everything!”_

“Easy, buddy!” Dean says. “Easy. Deep breaths. I get it. He was your yellow-eyed demon. I get it, okay? But I need you to chill. You hear me?”

Cas lowers his head until Mary can’t see his expression any more. She rubs his wrists with her thumbs, still restraining him but trying to soothe as well. Finally, Cas lifts his head.

“I will not attempt violence again,” he says stonily. “You can let me go.”

It’s hardly the most heartfelt declaration. Mary glances at Dean over Cas’s shoulder and then slowly lets Cas’s wrists go. Dean eases up on his chest as well.

Cas pulls free and stalks further into the room, putting the metal table Mary had found between himself and Gadreel, and then turns back and crosses his arms. “Sam is well enough for me to heal him,” he says pointedly. His meaning is clear - he’ll refrain from violence for the moment, and Gadreel can be dealt with however they like without Sam being harmed in the process.

Mary turns back to look at their audience. Gadreel looks indifferent, Crowley entertained.

“Haven’t seen Feathers that ruffled since I took out a hit on your boys,” he says cheerfully. “Now, what say we get down to brass tacks, as it were?”

“Fine by me,” Dean says grimly. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You can do what you like,” Gadreel says serenely. “I’ve already survived more than you can possibly imagine. Even you, demon.”

“Well, aren’t you a special snowflake,” Crowley drawls, and sticks a pin the size of a roofing nail into the side of Gadreel’s head.

Gadreel gives a strangled scream. Behind her, Dean flinches badly. Mary bites her lip.

Another pin, and another scream. This time, Crowley takes the end of the pin and twists it, angling it further into Gadreel’s skull. Gadreel screams again and glares at Crowley.

It’s not a frightened glare. It’s nearly unconcerned. Mary frowns - every extra jolt of pain just makes Gadreel cling to Sam’s body even harder. Maybe Crowley can trigger something with his poking and maybe he can’t, but Sam still has needles in his brain and there’s no way the sigils on the chair are going to have any effect if all of Gadreel’s attention is focused on clinging to Sam.

This isn’t going to work. They need to _loosen_ the hold Gadreel has, not force him further into it. 

Mary waits for the next scream, and then throws herself forward. “Stop! Stop! Just, stop for a minute, okay?”

Crowley rolls his eyes at the tremor in her voice. “I’m hacking his brain with sharp pointy things, princess - if you wanted it to be pretty, you should have picked another option. Oh wait, you didn’t have one.” He looks back at Dean. “Maybe your mother would be more comfortable guarding the car?”

Mary throws a pleading look at Dean. It’s dirty pool, and she feels bad about it, but she’d felt him shudder every time Gadreel screamed with Sammy’s voice. He wants it to stop just as much as she does.

“We’re taking a minute,” Dean says roughly, grabbing Crowley and manhandling him back towards the end of the room. “Let’s go.”

Cas remains, staring narrowly at Gadreel, but when Mary winks at him he hesitates for just a fraction of a second, and then turns and marches after Dean with his expression unchanged. Even though he’s in Sam’s body, Cas probably hadn’t felt bad about Gadreel’s pain. She’s glad he’s trusting her anyway.

Mary turns back towards Gadreel and pulls the pins out. It’s not hard to make her hands shake as she uses the sleeve of her shirt to wipe away some of the blood.

Gadreel watches her silently. “It won’t work,” he says after a long moment. “Kindness is no more effective an interrogation technique than pain is.”

“We’re not trying to interrogate you,” Mary says, voice wobbling. “Crowley’s trying to… I don’t know, I don’t really understand it. Rewire you, I think?”

Gadreel scoffs. “With pins and needles? Demons.”

Mary shrugs apologetically. “Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute? It’ll at least give you a bit of a break. And Sam, too,” she adds, letting her voice go quiet and unhappy.

Gadreel watches her carefully. “You’re my vessel’s mother?”

Mary nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have come. It’s too hard to watch Sam scream.”

He settles back in the chair a little bit. “You can talk to me. I don’t promise to answer.”

Mary nods. “No, that’s okay. I just - I can’t listen to any more screaming.” She fidgets, pulling her sleeves down over her knuckles. It makes her look younger, less secure. “Actually, I owe you a thank you. Dean said you saved Sammy’s life.”

“I did,” Gadreel agrees cautiously.

“Well, thank you.” She gives him a sheepish, watery smile. “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

“As am I,” Gadreel says, but he seems a little less defensive.

“Why did you help, if you don’t mind my asking?” Mary says tentatively. “I mean, the way Cas was talking… but you’ve been _nice_. Did you save his life, too? He said something about a woman who killed him while he was human.”

“I did,” Gadreel admits. “I also saved the life of a woman named Charlie.” He frowns a little, looking almost disoriented for a second before shaking it off. Mary’s heart thuds with hope. 

“Thank you,” she says earnestly.

“You’re welcome.” He glances away, almost shy. “I have spent a long time in prison, almost all of existence. I have listened to my captors as they told me what I had done, blamed me for every awful thing in the world. Just as Castiel did.” He shrugs modestly. “I wanted to do something good.”

“I can understand that,” Mary says, and she isn’t lying. She’s too focused on the way Gadreel’s eyes have gone unfocused to feel too much sympathy, though. _Come on, Sammy, hear me…_

She lets the conversation lapse into silence for a calculated moment, and then begins to hum ‘Hey Jude’. She’s not sure if Sammy will remember it. She’s not sure if he even knows it was the lullaby she used to sing to him. It’s worth a shot, though.

“That’s a lovely melody,” Gadreel says, blinking vaguely.

“It has lyrics, too,” Mary says, and starts singing.

Gadreel frowns, and then stiffens suddenly. “What? No! What did you do? _What did you- “_

There’s a blinding flash of light and a rush of _something_ that has Mary throwing herself off her chair and taking cover on the floor, arms up over her head, assailed by sudden misgivings. She’d never thought to ask Cas what happened after an angel abandoned its vessel. Can they still cause damage? Smite, or rain down wrath, or whatever? 

_Crap_. This may have been a deeply flawed plan. 

She can dimly hear Dean and the others shouting in surprise behind her, and then the rush of light and _whatever_ it is ends abruptly.

“Mom?” Sam says woozily above her. “Mom, what...?”

Mary pulls herself to her knees, patting Sam on the leg. “It’s okay, baby, everything’s fine now. Cas!”

Cas skids to a stop beside her, already raising his hand to heal the gouge marks on Sam’s head. Dean and Crowley are right behind him.

“Did you just talk an angel into abandoning its vessel?” Crowley demands, shocked. “ _Darling._ It’s a pity your children didn’t inherit your guile.”

“ _Hey,”_ Dean says absently, totally focused on undoing Sam’s restraints.

“I stacked the deck,” Mary says, shrugging and getting to her feet. “I put a whackload of Cas’s weakening sigils all over the chair before you guys got here. Sam did most of the work from there.”

Cas turns to look at her. “Seven of them?”

“Uh, yeah, actually.”

Cas nods approvingly. “That was very clever.” He turns to Dean. “All she had to do was disrupt Gadreel’s attention and Sam was able to get a glimpse of what was going on.”

“There was a guy in my head,” Sam mumbles. 

“You told him to get out?” Cas asks.

“Of course,” Sam says, eyeballing him. “Why was there a guy in my head?”

“Is he supposed to be this fuzzy?” Dean asks, hovering anxiously.

“It will pass,” Cas says, flaring white light all over Sam’s head again. “Give me a moment.”

“We might not have a moment,” Crowley says grimly, eyes focused on the entrance to the warehouse. After a moment Mary can hear it too: a car engine and the sound of doors slamming.

Dean and Cas immediately start hauling Sam to his feet. Mary runs for the window. “It’s a redhead in a leather jacket and two goons in suits,” she calls back. “The redhead looks pretty pissed.” Also kind of like she walked off of a pinup poster, but that’s probably not relevant.

Dean swears. “Abaddon. Frigging great.”

Crowley straightens his suit jacket as Mary clatters back down the stairs and starts shoving equipment back into their duffel bags. “Leave her to me.”

“Like Hell,” Dean says reflexively.

“Cas?” Mary asks. He’s their resident tactician, after all.

Cas considers the problem. “Better them fighting each other than fighting us,” he says. “We are short on time and not equipped for this battle.” He glances pointedly at Sam, leaning heavily on between him and Dean.

Dean scowls. “Fine. But I see you again -”

“You’ll kill me, I know,” Crowley sighs. “Now get lost.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They drive until they’re sure they’re a safe distance from the warehouse and then pull over to organize themselves and regroup. Given the tense nature of their getaway no one has really spoken, so it’s not until they’re all standing on a wooden footbridge in a light drizzle that Sam looks up past Cas’s healing light and says, “Okay. Now tell me what happened.”

Dean nods, looking at the ground. “You guys give us a sec?”

Mary’s not wild about leaving them hash it out by themselves, but she understands that Dean doesn’t want to do it in front of more people than he has to. She and Cas retreat down the bridge and stand awkwardly under a streetlight.

Mary tilts her head, trying to watch her boys without making it obvious she’s watching them. She desperately wants to know how the conversation is going.

“Dean is recounting his decision-making process,” Cas says. “Sam is yet to respond.” He shrugs sheepishly at Mary’s expression.

Mary hesitates for just a moment, because Dean had asked for privacy and she should respect that, but on the other hand given the way their lives are going the more she knows the better. When Cas keeps talking, she doesn’t stop him.

“Now Sam is reminding Dean that he chose to die and Dean should have respected that. Dean is saying that he is incapable of letting Sam die. Sam is asking after Kevin, and Dean is saying that it is his fault.”

It’s very strange to hear such an emotional conversation filtered through Cas’s monotone. The boys are both standing so stiffly that she can’t pick up any body language cues from them, but she can imagine their voices. Dean is probably speaking firmly, Sam more emotionally.

“Dean is saying that he is poison to those around him and it’s for the best if he stays away from all of us,” Cas says, alarmed. “Crowley made such a comment while we negotiated. I did not realize Dean had taken it so much to heart.”

“So that’s why he got so upset when Crowley started listing off names in the car?” Mary asks. She’d wondered at the time, but it had been clear that to ask would only have played into Crowley’s hands. She bites her lip. There had been a lot of names.

“Now he’s telling Sam to say goodbye to you from him,” Cas says. “He’s going to leave without us.”

Mary goes cold. “What? No! No, he can’t leave, he can’t we just got back together, how could he?” It’s not fair. It’s not _fair_. She can see that Sam is angry at Dean right now, and she can guess that it’s painful for Dean to even be around Sammy while he’s angry, but… but to leave? When they finally all came together?

“I have to stay with Sam,” Cas says, eyes wide and upset. “I can’t follow him.”

Okay. Okay. They can do this. If Cas works on Sam and Mary works on Dean, maybe they can sort this out. Sam is - Sam needs someone to take care of him right now, look after him, make sure he’s eating and sleeping and - but Cas, Cas can do that. He can. He _will_. Dean’s in no frame of mind to be left alone right now.

Mary kisses Cas quickly on the forehead. “Take care of Sam. I’ll call you, okay? Let me know how he’s doing.”

Cas nods, gripping her arm tight. “Be careful. Please take care of Dean.”

Dean’s already walking off the bridge. Mary runs after him, pausing by Sam to give him a hug. “Cas is going to take care of you, all right? I love you. I’ll stay in touch.” God, what is she doing? She needs to make sure Sam’s okay. He must be so mixed up right now.

Sam sighs. He looks tired and angry, but he nods in Dean’s direction. “Don’t let him do anything stupid. I love you too.”

She doesn’t like leaving him here. She doesn’t like her boys splitting up. She’s still not entirely convinced that tying them together or locking them in a room to sort out their problems isn’t a viable alternative, but Dean’s almost to the car and she’s out of time.

She catches up just as he opens the driver’s side door.

“Mom, go back with Sammy,” Dean says tiredly.

Mary opens the passenger door and gets in. It will be harder for him to get rid of her if she’s already buckled in.

He swings into the driver’s seat, glaring. “Mom, I’m serious. Stay with Sammy. I’m, I’m dangerous, okay? I’m only going to get you hurt. It’s what I do.”

“Kiddo,” Mary says, “If you want to talk about who’s dangerous for this family, you’re going to have to start with me.”

Dean’s shoulders slump. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says plaintively.

“I don’t want to get hurt either,” Mary says promptly. “So let’s not do anything reckless.”

Dean leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. “Fine,” he says after a long moment. “Fine. We’ll just… fine.”

He closes the door and starts up the car. The last Mary sees of Cas and Sam is the two of them in the rearview mirror, tiny and surrounded by darkness. Sam’s shoulders are slumped in exhaustion and Cas is staring worriedly after her.

Then Dean turns onto the main road, and they’re lost to the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m glad I waited until I’d seen 9x11 to post this chapter, because I’ve decided that after 9x11 is when I’m going to hijack this fic and head for the sunset down highway AU. There’ll still be a good deal of canon in Chapter Nine because there’s some stuff I want to use for both plot and fix-it purposes, but after that all bets are off!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Very brief non-specific discussion of addiction. Unflattering discussion of John Winchester’s parenting style, with accompanying implications of PTSD and nonspecific child abuse. Mary’s potty mouth gets _quite_ a workout.  
>  SPOILERS: For 9x11 'First Born'  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Driving routes, the history of Kansas (the band, that is).  
> NEW TAGS: Tara, Cain, John Winchester’s A+ parenting  
> NOTES: I am so sorry this chapter took so long! I normally get a lot of my writing done in between tasks at work, and lately I have actually been called upon to work during my work hours (unreasonable, but there you go). Anyway, hopefully things will calm down a bit from here on out.
> 
> In this chapter more than others I tackle a few sensitive subjects. Please remember that a) these scenes are based on what I think the characters in question would most logically do, whether or not that is the healthiest or most correct reaction, and b) I always, _always_ want to know about it if you think I've mishandled something.

They drive in silence. From time to time Mary thinks she really ought to say something, distract Dean from what have to be some pretty dark thoughts, but she can’t think of anything that won’t cause further pain.

She can’t get Sammy’s pale, drawn face out of her mind. Cas had said he could heal Sam, and Mary knows firsthand how effective Cas’s healing can be, but every instinct in her is crying out to turn around and make sure Sammy is okay. What if he needs to talk to someone? What if he has nightmares? She’s not even sure Cas understands what nightmares _are_ , let alone what to do about them.

She’s worried about Cas, too. They never really got a chance to talk about what happened in Malachi’s dungeon - the torture, Theo, the killings - and she doesn’t think even Cas knows what to expect from his borrowed Grace, or his sudden transition from humanity back to angel-hood. Add to that the stunned, hurt tone in his voice when he realised Dean was leaving them - and the fact that Mary left too…

Well. It’s a lot to absorb in a short period of time. She glances sideways at Dean. There’s been a lot for all of them to absorb, really.

Dean catches her looking, and after a second the tense, brooding expression on his face deliberately blanks out.

“You need to stop?” he asks. “Eat or something?”

Mary shakes her head. “No, I’m fine.” She hesitates, just for a second, and then bulls ahead. “Do we have a plan?”

Dean’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Find Gadreel. Gank the son of a bitch.”

Well. Cas had said that Dean coped by drinking, fighting, or having sex, and it’s not like Mary has any room to talk when it comes to getting bored and killing things. Getting rid of Gadreel is probably even a prudent move - he’s definitely working for someone, and he’s got a lot of insider information about all of them.

 _Literally_ insider information, actually. Mary winces. “Can we track him?”

“I have some ideas,” Dean says grimly. He glances over at her and his body languages relaxes, all of a sudden. “We should stop for the night.”

“Sure,” Mary says, a little unnerved by the switch in his demeanor.

They find a passable motel a few miles down the road, and Dean books two rooms before Mary can get a word in edgewise. She can completely understand Dean not wanting to share a room with his mother, but… well, Cas had said they were a lot alike, and if Mary was worried about putting her traveling companion in danger, she would take the first opportunity to ditch them for their own safety.

Come to think of it, Cas probably learned that little trick from Dean.

Their rooms are next to each other, so she waits until she hears the sound of the shower turn on in his room and then she sneaks down and steals the spark plugs out of his car. She has no idea how modern car engines might have changed over the years, but Dean’s car is nearly identical to the one John used to own so it’s easy enough to do. 

It goes against the grain to disable their best bet at a quick getaway, but it’s better than waking up in the morning to find that Dean’s headed off on some self-punishing revenge crusade by himself. She’ll just put up some extra warding and keep her angel sword close to hand, and hope for a little luck.

Back in her room, she puts the spark plugs down on the bedside table and curls up on the bed. They’ll need to stop for supplies at some point tomorrow - there’s only so long she can keep going in one set of borrowed clothes. She wraps Dean’s overshirt around her and tries not to feel forlorn. She misses Cas. He was a very quiet travelling companion, most of the time, but he was still good company and she knew how to relate to him.

She doesn’t know how to relate to Dean, not really. He’s her son, and she loves him, but she doesn’t _know_ him very well. She doesn’t know if he likes to talk when he’s upset, or if he needs someone to make him laugh and forget his problems, or if he just needs someone to trail along behind him and do damage control. She’s ready and willing to do any of those things, but it would be nice to know which one is expected of her. Or if doing any of those would actually make him feel _worse_.

In her pocket, her phone gives a muted beep. She pulls it out, nearly losing it in the blanket in the process (phones are so tiny these days, how does everyone manage? She tried cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder once to have her hands free and she’d given herself a crick in the neck. Sure, it fits in a pocket, but is it _practical?_ ). It’s a text from an unknown number, but if there’s one thing hunters learn it’s to answer every phone call. It’s always possible that if it might be an old contact or someone in trouble calling from an unfamiliar place.

_Hello mary this is castiel we are well how do you fare_

The smile is both unbidden and very welcome. Sam must have found Cas a phone somewhere, or maybe they stopped and got one on the way home.

 _So far so good on this end,_ she types back. The buttons are tiny and she generally prefers just calling someone, but she can admit that this texting thing can have its uses. Right now, for example, she and Cas could be sitting right next to Dean and Sam and still carry on a conversation without being overheard.

There’s a bit of a pause while Cas receives the message and crafts a reply, and then her phone beeps again.

_Sam says to sleep tightly and watch out for bugs i dont understand it but apparently it is required_

Mary laughs. _Will do._ And then, spurred on by mischief, she writes _Give Sam a hug for me._

There’s a pause of several minutes this time. She’s just starting to doze off when she receives a text from Sam.

_Most awkward hug of my life, thanks a lot for that Mom._

Mission accomplished. Mary grins as she writes _You’re welcome. Good night, sweetie._

The phone doesn’t beep again, and after a while Mary puts it on the bedside table and turns the light off. That’s two of her worries eased a little bit, at least.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary sleeps fitfully. She wakes at one point to the sound of Dean’s door closing quietly and near-silent footsteps going past her room down the hall. Straining her ears, a few minutes later she’s able to detect the creak of a car door opening, followed by silence and then an explosive _”Fuck!”_ Dean’s a lot less quiet when he comes back upstairs and returns to his room, but Mary doesn’t go out and confront him. Her point has been made - there’s no reason to turn it into a fight.

She dozes off again, waking periodically from confusing and amorphous dreams that make her feel irritable and argumentative. When she finally gives up and gets out of bed, she takes an extra ten minutes under the decently hot water of the shower in an attempt to rediscover her sense of patience. She has a sneaking suspicion that she’ll get farther with Dean if she’s calm than if she’s belligerent.

Her caution turns out to be unwarranted. Dean’s mood isn’t good, as predicted, but he seems depressed rather than angry. He doesn’t say a word about his midnight excursion, and she silently replaces the spark plugs while he’s checking them out of the motel. He frowns a little when the car starts easily, but that’s it.

They drive in silence for a while. Mary weighs the merits of requesting a stop for supplies versus asking about their strategy for tracking Gadreel, and eventually goes for the latter option. It might be a touchier subject, given that Dean tried to abandon her last night to carry on by himself, but in case he’s feeling irritated by her presence she’s guessing it might go over better than personal demands that might come across as high-maintenance.

“So,” she says finally. “How are we going to find Gadreel?”

Dean’s expression doesn’t change as he pulls something out of his pocket and tosses it into her lap. She fumbles it a little, startled, but manages to avoid dropping it in the footwell.

It’s a coaster, the cheap cardboard kind that gets handed out at bars as advertising, and sure enough it has the name of a bar somewhere in Ohio on it. On the other side there’s a name written in black permanent marker. It looks like the same penmanship as the one on the card left by Kevin Tran’s body.

“Gadreel had this when you found him?” she guesses.

“Yeah.”

“And... ‘Alexander Sarver’?” she asks, not entirely sure she wants the answer.

“Dead,” Dean says grimly.

Hardly unexpected, but she’s still sad to hear it - both for the sake of Alexander Sarver, whoever he was, and for Sam, who was forced to be present for it. She checks her phone surreptitiously, but there’s nothing new.

Dean catches the gesture. “You heard from Sam?” he asks, hands tensing on the wheel as if he’s bracing himself.

“Last night,” Mary says, keeping her tone light. “I think he found Cas a phone because he texted me too.”

Dean nods jerkily. “Cas, uh, figured out how to use punctuation yet?”

Mary laughs and shakes her head, willing to let Dean avoid the topic of Sam for the time being as long as he’s _talking_. “No, and he doesn’t seem to know how to capitalize anything either.”

Dean tries for a smile, and it’s mostly successful. “Man, you should have seen him when he first got a phone. Everything was capslock, it was like he was trying to make pronouncements from on high all the time. Eventually we figured out it was because he was using his mojo to text things instead of typing it out by hand, and Sam had to -” he cuts himself off abruptly, mouth tightening.

Mary scrambles for something to say, desperate to keep the conversation going. “Did you notice his shirt?” is what pops out, which, okay, is a little unexpected, but she can work with it.

“Cas’s shirt?” Dean asks, justifiably bewildered. “Um, white button-down, wasn’t it? That’s what he always wears.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Mary says. “No, I mean the t-shirt under it, which I guess you wouldn’t have been able to see.” _Smooth, so smooth, not awkward at all. Awesome._ “First time I took him to a second-hand store, and he didn’t really know what he was supposed to do, it was the first thing he picked for himself. I didn’t figure it out until yesterday, but it has a picture of your car on it.”

“They make shirts with the Impala on them?” Dean says, looking genuinely interested.

“Apparently,” Mary says, shrugging. She’s pretty sure it was just a car that _resembled_ the Impala, but whatever. “He would have worn that damn thing every day if I didn’t make him wash it occasionally.”

Dean nods, frowning, and falls silent for a moment. Mary resists the urge to blurt something else out - Dean looks pensive, not depressed or angry or like he’s withdrawing from her.

“He’s different, now,” he says finally, and Mary suppresses her relief. “I dunno if it was because of being around you or what, but he’s different. More emotional. He wouldn’t have been sentimental before.”

“I don’t really have much for comparison,” Mary says, “but I think being human had a lot to do with it. He was kind of an unusual angel, wasn’t he?”

Dean actually laughs a little. “Yeah, he’s always been an oddball.” His smile falters. “It doesn’t usually work out too well for him.”

“Well, he seemed to like being human,” Mary says quickly, wary of the downturn in Dean’s mood. “I mean, I had to get him stoned on painkillers before he admitted it, but -”

Dean turns to look at her so sharply that the car swerves a little. “You got him _stoned?”_

Mary blinks, alarmed by the strength of Dean’s reaction. “He broke his arm, Dean, it’s not like I bought him narcotics for kicks.”

Dean visibly restrains himself. “Yeah. Okay. No, of course, I didn’t think you would - just, watch out with that stuff around him, okay?”

“Sure,” Mary says, a little rattled. Still, it’s sweet of Dean to be protective, even though she suspects he might be overcompensating a little for having made Cas leave the bunker when he was vulnerable.

Dean drums his fingers on the wheel. “He didn’t… _like_ it, did he?”

“He said it made it hard to concentrate,” Mary says. “Dean, is there something -”

“No,” Dean says, cutting her off. “No. I’m just overreacting. It’s nothing.”

“Okay,” Mary says peaceably, and lets the conversation lapse. She’s starting to suspect that Dean’s reaction was strong for reasons other than protectiveness - or, at least, not solely connected to it. Maybe he knew someone who was an addict - it would be understandable for him to be a little gun-shy about it. She doesn’t think it would have been Cas, because what would an angel get addicted to? But it could have been someone else.

Her blood goes cold. God, what if it had been John? He’d been a bit of a drinker when they were married - nothing too problematic, but sometimes he did drink more than Mary liked, particularly when they’d been fighting. What would he have done after she died?

“Dean,” Mary says slowly. “John wasn’t… was John an okay dad? Were you and Sammy okay? He looked out for you?”

Dean sighs. “He protected us,” he says finally. “I mean, he wasn’t always father of the year, and you should have heard him and Sam fight, but he tried his best. Can’t ask for more than that.”

It’s hardly a glowing recommendation. Mary frowns, worried.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Dean says abruptly. “I know this isn’t what you wanted for us.”

Mary shrugs. “What, hunting? No, but only because I knew it was dangerous and I wanted to protect you for as long as possible. Through college and well into adulthood, ideally,” she adds.

Dean darts a look at her. “What _did_ you want for us?”

Mary smiles. “That’s the thing about being a parent, Dean - every time your kid picks up a block you start imagining them as an architect. I imagined a lot of things for you guys.”

Dean’s expression is oddly vulnerable. “Like what?”

“Well,” Mary says, “Sammy was too little to really tell much about his personality, but he was so stubborn that your dad always joked he’d be a lawyer. I figured he’d be a librarian. I left him alone with a copy of _Make Way For Ducklings_ once and by the time I got back he’d eaten an entire corner of it.”

Dean snorts. “Well, he did grow up to be a huge nerd. And he was going to go to law school, until he got pulled back into all this.” His expression darkens.

“Damn, I would have owed John ten bucks,” Mary says, just to see if it’ll make Dean smile. He does, a little. “You, now, you were so good with Sammy I thought you might be a teacher. Or I thought you might want to work in a restaurant or a bakery, since you liked helping me in the kitchen so much.”

Dean’s expression softens, and she wonders if he’s remembering some of those times. 

“Mostly I just wanted you guys to be happy.”

She regrets it as soon as she says it. The smile vanishes off of Dean’s face as if it had never been, and the tension returns immediately.

“But, I mean, sometimes stuff happens,” Mary stammers. “You aren’t _required_ to be happy just because I -”

“No, I get it,” Dean says sharply. “I know I fucked up.” He reaches over and cranks on the radio. Mary flinches back into her seat, ears assaulted by… is that Kansas? They still play that on the radio?

Her phone buzzes in her pocket - it’s Sam, letting her know that Cas is missing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which Mary doesn’t know what to do about. A moment later she gets a text from Cas that doesn’t go anywhere near explaining the sandwich thing, but does at least give her an idea of how her younger son is faring.

_Have tried to plant idea of calling dean for help in sams mind unsuccessful so far he became belligerent but i will make further attempts_

Mary sighs. A moment later another text arrives.

_Dean is not praying to me at all_

Well. Thank goodness everybody’s worried. 

They drive the rest of the way without talking.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They pull up to the bar and Dean turns off the engine, leaving Mary’s ears ringing in the sudden silence. She’s spent the last hour trying to think of what to say once she doesn’t have to yell over the music any more, but it turns out to have been a wasted effort. Dean doesn’t give her a chance to speak.

“You’ve got an angel blade, right?”

“Yes,” Mary says, tucking it through her belt. “Dean -”

“Good. Watch your back, we don’t know what this guy looks like any more.” He swings out of the car before she can say anything more.

Mary sighs and lets it go. Dean very emphatically doesn’t want to talk, and she’s not going to get anywhere while he’s this defensive. She knows that the amount of guilt he’s carrying around needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, but she’s also wary of causing more damage in the process. She resigns herself to a grimly silent afternoon.

She’s not wrong. They spend most of the afternoon at the bar, drinking beer slowly and mostly for show, and waiting for something to happen. Once or twice someone tries to hit on one of them, but that’s about as much action as they see. It’s not really that much of a surprise, frankly. There’s no reason for Gadreel and whoever he’s taking orders from to come back to this place. They may have only even been here the one time.

Mary’s just about to try to break it gently to Dean that his lead on Gadreel is probably no good when Crowley’s oily voice says from just over her shoulder, “What’s this, the family that slays together gets slayed together?”

Mary’s elbow goes back reflexively, catching Crowley in the solar plexus. He gives an _oof_ and doubles over, glaring, and Mary feels a little bit bad for the lapse in her control until she notices Dean smirking.

Crowley did do his level best to mess with Dean’s head, after all. It’s really only fair that he does what he can to cheer him up afterwards.

“Very nice,” Crowley says, scowling. “Very ladylike. And here I was, about to tell you how to kill Abaddon.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “You want us to do it for you, you mean.”

Crowley grins. “Tomayto, tomahto, isn’t it? We both want the bitch dead.” He inclines his head towards Mary. “Apologies.”

Mary shrugs. “I actually already know that word.”

“I bet you do,” Crowley says, grin still firmly in place. Mary glares at him. “So, how’s about it? I tell you what I know, you tell me what you know, and we skip off together into the Knight-of-Hell-killing sunset?”

Dean narrows his eyes. “What exactly do you want from us? Knights of Hell are immortal.”

Crowley helps himself to a bar stool. “Well, it just so happens that I know of a weapon that can kill one. And I just happen to know of a hunter who interrogated and killed the demon who knew how to find it.”

“That seems awfully convenient,” Mary remarks mildly to her beer bottle.

“Dad, right?” Dean says, ignoring this. “And you want me to check his journal.”

“ _Pretty_ please. December 19th, 1989.”

Dean pulls a battered three-ring journal with a leather cover out of his jacket, and Mary resists the urge to grab it for herself. It should have occurred to her that John would have a journal. Most hunters do. Had he written more in it than just monster facts? Had he included things about the boys? She wasn’t there for them as they grew up, but maybe she could find out some details from John’s perspective.

Maybe that will also give her an idea of how he treated them. He was a decent father when they were babies, even if he wasn’t always a great husband, but she knows how people can change after tragedies. Dean’s short description in the car earlier wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“December 19th,” Dean says, interrupting Mary’s train of thought. “Yeah. He questioned a demon who mentioned something called the ‘First Blade’, but he thought it was lying.” He squints at the cramped handwriting on the page. “I think he was working with another hunter, though - a Tara… Hayward? Haywood?”

“Tara Hayward,” Mary says, surprised. “I knew her. My mom took her on her first hunt. She was a good shot.”

“Wait, Deanna was a hunter?” Dean asks, closing the book. “I didn’t know that.”

“Sure,” Mary says. “She taught me a lot of what I know. She was an incredible knife fighter.”

“Seriously?” Dean asks, astonished. “I never knew. I mean, I knew Samuel -”

“ _Anyway,”_ Crowley coughs. “So. Tara Hayward. Shall we pay a visit?”

Dean and Mary exchange looks. Neither of them are too keen on bringing Crowley along, and Mary _definitely_ doesn’t want to walk him right up to another hunter, particularly one she knows and respects.

Crowley gives a long-suffering sigh. “Look, don’t you think you can use all the extra muscle you can get on this one? I know I’m not an official member of the Scooby Gang, but you’re possibly going up against a Knight of Hell, here.”

Unfortunately, he’s probably right about that. Mary doesn’t know much about the Knights of Hell, but ‘immortal’ doesn’t fill her with much confidence. She would never trust Crowley to come to their rescue or anything, but he’ll probably defend _himself_ if attacked and he does have demonic strength. They’ll just have to make sure he always winds up between them and whoever attacks them.

“Well, I guess we could use some cannon fodder,” Dean concedes. “Come on, Scrappy.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

With Jody’s help, they track Tara down to a pawn shop in Indiana. It’s well-organized and clean and, they discover when Crowley steps into a Devil’s Trap and Tara takes one look at Mary and points a shotgun in her face, it’s well-protected, too.

Mary immediately steps behind Crowley. He’ll survive a shot to the head much better than she will, after all, and hunters can be a pretty ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ bunch. It’s only practical.

“Look, I know what this looks like,” Mary calls to Tara from behind Crowley. “But it’s really me. Toss me your kit.”

Tara studies them for a moment, eyes flicking from Dean to Crowley to the top of Mary’s head and back again, and then she shifts her grip on the shotgun and pitches a flask of holy water in Mary’s direction.

Mary takes a swig and then passes it over to Dean, who does the same. She points to a letter opener in a rack on the counter. “Silver?”

Tara nods. Mary slices her forearm, holding it out for Tara’s inspection, and then hands it over to Dean too. Tara relaxes infinitesimally when they both pass, which is to say she starts pointing the shotgun only at Crowley.

Mary steps cautiously out from behind Crowley, her hands out to her sides. “It’s a long story, but somebody brought me back from the dead. Not sure why yet, but we’re trying to figure it out. This is my son, Dean.”

Tara nods. “Fair enough. Now what’s with the demon?”

“Reluctant temporary allies,” Dean says, just as Crowley says “Bosom buddies, of course.”

“Stop helping, Crowley,” Mary says conversationally. “Look, Tara, we’re here because of a job you went on with John a few years back. You interrogated a demon who mentioned something called the First Blade?”

Tara scowls. “That damn thing. Yeah, he mentioned it. John thought it was bunk, I thought it had promise. I even tracked it down, but the guy who has it is pretty keen on keeping it. I gave it up. I was thinking of retiring anyway.” She shifts slightly as she says this, easing her weight off of her right leg. Old injury, probably. “Why do you want it?”

“We’re tracking a Knight of Hell,” Dean says. “Last one left. We think it should be able to kill her.”

Tara’s eyes flick over to Crowley. “Hence the demon.”

“Hence, as you say, the demon,” Mary agrees.

“Still here,” Crowley reminds them mildly. “And I can hear you.”

“Demon’s not the kind of ally I would expect a Campbell to have,” Tara says, “much less John Winchester’s son. But these are bad times. I can understand a desperate alliance.” She lowers the gun slightly. “I can tell you where to find the Blade, for all the good it will do you.”

“Thank you,” Mary says, relieved.

“You should know,” Tara says slowly, digging a map out of a drawer, “that after we went after the demon John and I spent the weekend together.”

Dean stiffens, but Mary shrugs. Given what she knows about why they even got together in the first place, she can hardly begrudge John finding comfort somewhere after her death. “Hope he respected you.”

Tara grins suddenly, sharp and amused. “Fine during the weekend, but then he never called.”

“Hunters,” Mary says rolling her eyes.

“You said it,” Tara says, unfolding the map. “Here. Missouri. You’ll feel it when you get close.”

Mary marks the location and commits it to memory. “Thanks, Tara. We owe you one.”

“Sure.” Tara limps around the counter and scuffs out part of the Devil’s Trap with her foot, keeping her gun pointed squarely at Crowley. “Good luck.”

“You too.” Mary ushers Dean and Crowley out the door ahead of her.

“Hey, Mary?”

She turns back. “Yes?”

Tara sets her gun down on the counter. “I’m glad we got someone back, even if we don’t know why. We’ve lost too many, the last few years.”

“Thanks,” Mary says, genuinely touched. She turns to follow Dean and Crowley, waiting impatiently by the car, and nearly runs into a man in a trucker cap who tries to go in through the door at the same time.

Crowley smirks, and Dean reaches over and cuffs him on the back of the head. Crowley growls and clenches his fists.

“Don’t make me separate you two,” Mary says wearily.

“He started it,” Dean mutters resentfully.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The location in Missouri is just far enough away and they’re getting started late enough in the day that they decide to stop and stay the night halfway there. Crowley vanishes from the front seat of the car as soon as they make the decision (Mary had elected to sit in the back, directly behind him with her angel blade in her lap), and that plus the warnings they’d gotten from Tara about what they’re up against lead them to share a room that night for greater security.

Once they’re checked in, Mary steps outside to call Sam from the parking lot. Dean starts to object, and then he notices the phone in her hand and falls silent, looking guilty.

Sam picks up on the first ring, and they spend a few minutes chatting amiably. He seems to be in decent enough spirits and reasonably recovered from his injuries. He’s not keen on their plan to team up with Crowley, but he tells her that he and Cas have discovered a possible way to track Gadreel using his residual Grace and they’re going to try it out tomorrow.

“Well, be careful,” Mary says. She feels a little dubious about their plans as well, but she trusts that they know what they’re doing. Sam promises that they’ll take precautions.

Once she’s wished Sam a good night and hung up, she hesitates for a long moment, staring at her phone. It’s occurred to her that Missouri might be a source of information about Sam and Dean’s childhood, but she’s suddenly not entirely sure she wants to know for sure. On the one hand, she might be working herself up over nothing.

But on the other hand… what if it was actually _worse?_

She hits ‘send’ before she can lose her nerve. Missouri picks up quickly.

“Well hello, baby. I was just about to call you.”

Mary tries, she really does, but temptation proves to be too much. “Who’s psychic now?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s _sake_ ,” Missouri snaps, exasperated.

“Sorry,” Mary says, abashed. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Well, what did you need?” Missouri says, a little testily. “You called first, it’s only fair.”

“Oh.” Mary sits herself down on the curb by the front door. “Right. No, I was just, I was wondering - do you know much about John? About how he treated the boys? What I mean is, was he… an okay father?”

Missouri’s silent for a moment. “The thing you have to understand,” she says slowly, “Is that he loved those boys but something broke in him the night you died. Maybe it was because of what the angels did and maybe it was just because he didn’t have it in him to bend, I don’t know. He did as well as he could by them, I do believe that.”

“Did he hurt them?” Mary whispers, her heart in her mouth. 

“Well,” Missouri says reluctantly, “he didn’t know how to train hunters. He knew how to train soldiers, so that’s what he did. And it did make them stronger in a lot of ways, but... it also made them fragile.”

Mary remembers what John was like when he got back from the war. He’d fared better than a lot of the guys did, reintegrated better and reaclimated to a civilian lifestyle, but it hadn’t been easy or perfect. Not by a long shot. Mary had learned not to touch him when he had nightmares and she’d learned how to navigate around most of his triggers and that had seemed to help, but now… now, imagining him after the fire, faced by unknown enemies trying to hurt his family… well. She can picture how that would have turned out.

“So he did.”

Missouri sighs. “Yes. In one way or another.”

She feels for John, she really does.

But she has no sympathy for anyone who hurts her children.

“God fucking dammit,” Mary says, getting to her feet. “God _fucking_ dammit that _fucking_ asshole!” It’s not just John, of course. It’s the damn angels who got them together and the asshole demons who decided to interfere. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck!”_

“Mom?” Dean says hesitantly from the door to their room. His body language is tense and wary, like he isn’t sure if she’s going to be violent or not.

He’d said that Sam and John used to fight. Mary can imagine that - she remembers how stubborn Sam could be and she can’t imagine John taking that well even when he was at his best. 

And she will bet anything that Dean was the one in the middle trying to keep the peace. He’d been so protective of Sam and so quick to console her whenever she and John fought, there’s no way he would have sat back and let his only family tear into each other.

It’s no wonder he thinks that any price is okay as long as Sammy comes out alive at the end of it.

She points the phone at Dean. “I am going to resurrect your fucking father and break his goddamn _fucking_ nose!”

“What?” Dean says, utterly nonplussed. “Oh. Is this about Tara?”

“What? No!” Mary yells. “I was dead, I don’t care about - this is because I trusted him with my children and he was a fucking _awful_ father!”

Dean’s jaw drops. 

“He wasn’t that bad,” he says eventually. “I mean, it wasn’t - sometimes it - but, but me and Sammy looked out for each other.”

The anger drains out of her. Dean looks so worried, so unsure, and she knows he’s already beating himself up over failing Sam. It’s not at all fair of her to call that into question and make him deal with this too. 

It probably wasn’t fair of her to let him slip into that comforting role when he was a child, either, but she’s thirty years past fixing that one. This, at least, she can do right.

“I know,” she says. “I know you did, kiddo. I’m just sorry you didn’t have more help.” She pulls him in for a hug. He accepts it tentatively, but lingers a little once she’s got him.

Mary squeezes his arm and puts the mostly forgotten phone back to her ear. “Missouri, I apologize. Did you have a question for me?”

“For Dean, actually, or whichever one of your boys is closest,” Missouri says, mercifully not commenting on Mary’s cursing streak. “I need to know how many hunters they’ve seen in Heaven.”

Mary frowns but hands the phone over. “Missouri has a question for you.”

Dean takes the phone and listens for a moment, then says “I saw Ash and Pamela in Heaven, and we sent Dad up from Hell and Bobby up from Purgatory.” He listens for another moment, then hands the phone back, shrugging. “She has a question for you now.”

“Do you remember what happened in between dying and being in the house? Or between then and when you were resurrected?”

Mary thinks about this, frowning. “Not really,” she admits. “I remember dying the first time, and I remember seeing Dean and Sam in the house, but it’s really fuzzy and there’s nothing at all in between.” Now that she thinks about it, it is odd. She should remember the time she spent in the house before Dean and Sam came back, shouldn’t she? “Should I remember something?”

“Maybe not,” Missouri says thoughtfully. “It’s just a hunch. I’ll let you know if I figure anything out.”

She hangs up. Mary gestures helplessly with the phone and then tucks it back into her pocket, giving up.

“Are you okay?” Dean asks.

“I’m fine, honey,” Mary says. It’s close enough to the truth, anyway. She’s still furious, but she has a hold on herself now. “I’m sorry for losing it on your earlier.” She rubs his back. “Want to see if there’s anything on TV?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, still watching her worriedly.

They wind up watching an old sci-fi show that Mary remembers from before she died. Unlike Cas, Dean doesn’t seem to have much of a thing for cartoons, but he’d seemed to take an interest in this when it popped up. The scantily-clad alien babe on screen at the time _might_ have helped.

“I used to love this show,” Mary says fondly. “I’m still sad it only lasted a few years. They made a movie shortly before I died, but it wasn’t very good so I don’t think it ever went further than that. Too bad, really. I’m surprised it’s even on reruns.”

“Mom, that’s _Star Trek,”_ Dean says faintly.

“You’ve seen it?”

“Mom, they’re _still_ making _Star Trek_ movies. They’ve made, like, five different TV shows.”

“Huh,” Mary says, mildly impressed. “Maybe there is hope for the future.”

Dean looks like he’s struggling to decide between rolling his eyes and agreeing. 

“There’s a really good one with whales,” he says finally.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Crowley reappears the next day as they head out in search of the First Blade, popping into existence in the backseat and smiling smugly when Dean swears at him. As much as she resents the showmanship of it, Mary has to admit that he has good timing - half an hour later they’re pulling up to a weatherbeaten old farmhouse with a wraparound porch.

Tara is right. Mary _can_ feel something - cold and oily, like being in the room with a ghost, but worse. It feels bad. Primal. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight and she has to fight down the instinct to grab Dean and run.

Even Crowley seems to feel it, hunching down in his suit jacket and keeping a close eye on their surroundings. Dean, Mary notices, is carrying more weapons than usual.

“So now what?” Dean asks.

Crowley’s fixated on something over Dean’s shoulder. Mary leans to the side far enough to get a glimpse of a man in a beekeeping suit and gives Crowley a questioning look.

“We have to get out of here,” Crowley says numbly. He’s gone white. “That’s Cain. That’s the bloody Father of Murder. We have to get out of here _right now.”_

“You were the one who wanted to track down the Blade,” Dean reminds him.

“ _Forget it,”_ Crowley hisses. “It’s not worth -”

He cuts off abruptly. Cain is standing right behind him.

Up close he’s not that scary - he’s of average height, bearded, with longish hair combed to the side in a way that even Mary recognizes as old-fashioned. He doesn’t look like a threat. He’s wearing a _beekeeping_ suit, for crying out loud.

His eyes, though, are frankly unnerving - dark, detached, and inhuman. The cold feeling is worse when he’s closer, too.

“Retired,” Cain says mildly. “And you’re trespassing. Get out.”

“Okay,” Crowley says immediately.

“We need the First Blade to kill a Knight of Hell,” Dean says.

Cain’s eyes narrow. He studies them all for a moment. “Dean Winchester, isn’t it? And Crowley, you I know by sight. Fine. Come inside.” His eyes linger on her for a second, but he doesn’t seem to take an interest. He doesn’t ask for her name and Mary finds herself extremely disinclined to volunteer it. It’s bad enough that he knows who Dean is without being told.

They trail along behind him into the house. Dean has to shove Crowley when he balks at the doorway, but by the time they get in Cain has vanished into the kitchen and seems to be… making tea? Mary and Dean trade weirded-out looks. Crowley ignores them. It looks like he’s actually shaking.

Mary frowns. When Cas had angeled up again, he hadn’t been able to shake. It seems odd that a demon would have such an obvious physical tell and an angel wouldn’t.

“He’s doing something,” Crowley mutters. “I can’t leave. He’s doing something.”

Cain returns, carrying an honest-to-God tea tray with a delicate china tea set on it. Mary’s sense of unreality spikes.

“So,” he says. “You want to kill a Knight of Hell.”

“Yep,” Dean says, facing him down.

Cain eyes him over the rim of his cup. “I know of you, Dean Winchester. Where is your brother?”

“Safe,” Dean says curtly.

“Is he,” Cain murmurs. “I wonder. The Winchesters travel together. They hunt together. They face everything together. What have you done to be without him right now?”

Dean’s flinch is miniscule, but it’s there. Cain’s gaze sharpens, and Dean immediately goes on the offensive. “He’s alive, which is more than I can say for yours.”

Mary would close her eyes in dismay if she wasn’t worried that blinking would make her miss something. Crowley makes a noise that sounds very close to a whimper.

Cain puts his cup down. “Yes. I killed Abel.” He stares Dean down. “To save him from Lucifer I traded my place in Heaven for Abel’s in Hell. The price for it was Abel’s life and so yes, I killed him. You would know something about that kind of choice, wouldn’t you?”

Dean swallows hard. “So are you going to give us the Blade or not?”

Cain leans back in his chair, abruptly. “I’ve killed all but one of the Knights. That’s a hard fight that you’re picking, I trained them well.”

Mary frowns. “Why did you kill them if you were the one who trained them?” 

She wishes she hadn’t drawn attention to herself the minute she says it, but Cain doesn’t really react. His gaze flickers quickly to a framed daguerreotype of a woman on the mantle and then his expression blanks again.

“I had my reasons.”

A woman, then. Mary files that away.

“Then kill the last one,” Dean suggests. “Job over. Enjoy your retirement.”

“No,” Cain says evenly. “I’ve sworn to do no more violence.”

“Fine, then give us the Blade and _we’ll_ kill the last one,” Dean says, frustration starting to color his tone. “We’ve killed a lot of nasty sons of bitches.”

“Yes, you have,” Cain murmurs. “You’re a killer, just like I am.”

Dean’s chin raises fractionally, and Mary’s heart lurches. Dean doesn’t just think of himself as a killer, does he? He’s so much more than that.

The worryingly intense staring match between Cain and Dean is interrupted by the sound of cars pulling up outside. Cain frowns. “Did you tell someone you were coming?”

Mary hurries over to the window to look out. There are at least four cars out there and more people walking up out of nowhere. She squints - the lead car is being driven by a familiar-looking man in a trucker cap. His eyes are black and his face is half-destroyed by what looks like a shotgun blast.

“Tara,” Mary realises with a lurch. She’d seen that man go into the pawn shop as they were leaving. Hell, she’d run into him. “Oh God.” Tara wouldn’t have given up that information lightly. 

She turns back to the room. “There are more demons out there than we can fight.”

Crowley bolts for the door, but it’s shut tight. Dean gives Cain a pointed look.

“Retired,” Cain reminds him, settling back in his chair. “That door will hold them back for a little while, but they’ll get in.”

“And will you fight?” Dean demands.

“They can’t kill _me_ ,” Cain says bleakly.

“Then give us the fucking Blade!” Dean shouts. Mary glances back out the window - they’re surrounding the building and unless she misses her guess it looks like they’re getting ready to set fire to it.

“They’re going to burn us out,” she says numbly.

Cain watches Dean closely for a moment, and then sighs and appears to come to a decision. “The Blade doesn’t work without the Mark.” He stands and rolls up his sleeve, revealing a brand on one forearm. “I’m not going to come out of retirement, but we’re enough alike that I should be able to transfer the Mark over to you.”

Dean nods, reaching for Cain’s hand. Mary’s moving before she even realises it, shoving her way between the two of them. “ _Get away from my son.”_

“Mom!” Dean protests, and she’s sure with a little distance - say a few years - she’ll think it’s funny that this is the first time she’s gotten a genuinely teenager-y protest out of him. For right now, though, she’s too angry and too scared. Cain is staring down at her and Dean apparently thinks so little of himself that he’s willing to take on the goddamned _Mark of Cain_.

Cain frowns. “Son? You’re his mother?” He leans closer. Mary’s pressed up against Dean now, which is a tactically poor decision because it makes it harder for him to get at his weapons, but she’s too terrified of what he’ll do if she lets go of his arm. “I’ve heard of you. You died when he was small. Who brought you back?”

He takes her chin in one hand, staring into her eyes. Dean protests behind her, but Mary stands her ground.

“The angels,” Cain says, astonished. “The _angels_ brought you back? And recently, too. Why?”

“I’m not sure,” Mary says. It seems like a bad time to raise the possibility of Lucifer’s involvement, given the audience and the fact that she and Cas haven’t shared that little tidbit with Dean or Sam yet.

Cain steps back, one hand over his mouth. It’s the most expressive he’s been so far, but she’s not sure if it’s a good sign or a bad one.

Someone starts banging on the front door. It sounds like they’re using a battering ram. 

“Fine, then,” Cain says. He makes a shrugging motion with his right shoulder, and a big, thick-bladed knife that looks to be made out of bone appears in his hand.

The house doors swing open without warning and the demons flood in, but before Mary can do more than raise her angel blade she and Dean are suddenly standing outside the house.

“What?” Dean says. They can see bright flashes of sickly red light through the windows and hear demons screaming. Something splatters against the front windows. It looks a lot like entrails.

A second later Crowley appears next to them, looking shaken.

“Let’s go, let’s _go_ ,” he says, scrambling for the door handle.

“Make your own way,” Mary snaps. “You were trying to set Dean up, weren’t you?”

“What?” Dean says again, pausing in the act of opening the driver’s side door.

“Come on,” Mary says impatiently. “He’s been working on you for days. Between convincing you that you get everybody killed and the way he missed a demon walking into the pawn shop right in front of us?” She turns on Crowley. “And I bet you knew about the Mark and Blade working together before we went in there. You _wanted_ Dean to take the Mark. Are those demons your goons or Abaddon’s?” 

Crowley scowls. “Abaddon’s. They couldn’t have brought back Papa Winchester instead, could they?” He complains. “He was dumb as a rock, just like his progeny.” He vanishes ahead of Mary’s angel blade.

“Mom -” Dean starts.

“Shut up and drive,” Mary gasps, flinging herself into the car. Maybe Cain can hold all those demons off and maybe he can’t, but she doesn’t want to stick around to find out. She still has no clue why he suddenly decided to let them go and take on a demon army in their place, but it makes her really damn suspicious.

Dean, fortunately, is practical enough even in his confusion to follow her advice. He peels out of the front yard and floors the accelerator.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They don’t start to relax until they’re well down the road, and even then it’s only a technical sort of relaxation. Mary no longer feels like they’re an inch away from being slaughtered, but she’s got so many emotions boiling away inside of her that she can’t possibly turn her brain off.

She’s angry at Crowley, of course, but really only because he almost succeeded in manipulating them. She’s devastated that Tara’s dead, both because she was a good hunter and because she was an actual link to Mary’s past that’s gone now. Mary doesn’t have so many of those left that she can give them up lightly.

She’s angry at Dean, too. She understands why he tried to make the choice he did, but she can’t condone it. She’s desperately afraid for him, and that makes her anger worse.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. Frustrated and in need of a distraction, she pulls it out.

Her eyebrows climb. She has six unread text messages from both Sam and Cas. Alarmed, she cues up the first one, from Cas.

_Why must pain be required for atonement_

That sounds ominous. The next few text messages had arrived all at once. She keeps reading.

_i dislike hurting others i dislkie it_

_why mjst winchetsers runt owards death_

_WHY DONT YOU REALIE HOW PREIOUS YOUARE_

There’s a gap of about half an hour, and then a message from Sam: _Was it being human that made Cas this smart, or was it you?_ followed by another message from Cas: _All is well apologies for becoming upset do not worry_

“The hell?” Mary mutters. Dean glances over, worried, but she’s too busy calling Cas to reassure him.

“What happened? Are you all right?” she asks as soon as he answers.

“We are both fine,” Cas says. “I apologize. I should not have sent you those messages but I acted without thinking.”

Dean had said that Cas texted with his Grace sometimes. It probably explains the sudden capslock. Mary pinches the bridge of her nose. “Cas. Please explain what happened.”

Cas sighs. “We discovered a spell in one of the Men of Letters’ books that we hoped would let us track Gadreel. Grace from the angel being sought was required. Fortunately some had been left within Sam, but the extraction process was... difficult. That’s when the majority of those messages were sent. Sam is quite well, however.”

She can hear him speaking in the background, and a moment later his voice gets louder as he gets the phone from Cas. 

“Hi, Mom. Sorry. We’re both fine. The spell didn’t work, though.”

“I don’t care if the spell worked as long as you’re both okay,” Mary says, teeth gritted. She’s positive that she’s not getting the entire story. Cas had said ‘why must Winchesters run towards death’, which gives her a pretty good idea about who had been most keen on finishing the spell no matter what the cost was.

She’s really starting to lose her temper about this ends-justify-the-means self-sacrifice thing her kids have going on.

“We are.” Sam actually sounds kind of sheepish about it. “Sorry to make you worried. Cas took good care of me.”

“Worrying’s my job, kiddo,” Mary says, and boy if it isn’t a full-time one. And she’d thought it was bad when they were babies! She sighs - at least she knows Cas is keeping an eye on Sam and trying to reign in his more destructive plans. That gives her a little leeway to focus on Dean until she and Cas can convince the two of them to be in the same room together.

“Don’t do anything reckless, okay? Take care.”

“Okay. Sorry again, Mom.”

“Are they all right?” Dean asks once she’s hung up.

“They’re fine,” Mary says, her tone clipped. “Pull over and get out.”

Eyebrows raised, Dean complies. “What now?” He asks once they’re beside the car.

“Hit me.”

“What?” Dean actually takes a step backwards.

Mary spreads her hands. “Come on. You’ve got to be at least a little annoyed with me. Go ahead.”

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Dean snaps.

“Then stop taking stupid chances!” Mary yells. “Stop trying to sacrifice yourself for every cause that comes along and don’t volunteer for the goddamn Mark of Cain!” 

“That’s not fair,” Dean protests. He looks unnerved.

“Good.” Mary says wearily. “I am _fine_ with not being fair. If you’re not going to watch out for yourself on your own accord, then I am absolutely okay with manipulating the shit out of you to get it done. So promise me that you will start putting yourself first or at least on a par with everybody else, or just go ahead and hit me. It will hurt less, I promise you.”

“ _Mom,”_ Dean says, pained.

“Dean,” Mary says softly, “I know I screwed up. I know your Dad screwed up. If the only thing I can get right is to stop you and Sam from this - this insane competition to sacrifice yourselves, then I’ll call it a job well done.”

“You don’t know what it’s been like,” Dean says quietly. “What we’ve had to do. The choices we’ve had to make.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Mary says dully. “I know I don’t and I’m so sorry. Let me help you from now on? Please?”

“I can try,” Dean says. His voice is barely audible. “I don’t… but maybe I can try.”

“Okay. Trying is good.” Mary steps forward and takes his face in her hands. “I love you so much, kiddo, and I’m so proud of you.”

Dean ducks his head so she can’t see his face, but the way he raises one hand to wipe under his eyes is pretty telling. “So,” he says to the ground, “we might be able to find that movie with the whales. You want to watch that?”

Mary kisses the top of his head. “Yeah, kiddo. Let’s see if we can find it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the AU train, heading westish! Also, in the show Tara’s last name is never mentioned, so I used the last name of her actress instead.
> 
> A few notes on character development: at the beginning of the show, Dean is very much a pro-Dad guy, but as the show wears on he and Sam kind of reverse their positions. At this point, I figure Dean has a pretty good grip on the fact that John messed up about as much as he got right.
> 
> Additionally, it's canon that Dean likes _Star Trek_ in general and _The Voyage Home_ in particular - he name-drops the movie in 6x18 'Frontierland' and gets upset when Sam and Bobby don't get the reference.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: So, this one gets a little gory. Sorry about that! It shouldn’t be too over-the-top. Also, there are several locations in this chapter that I found on Google Maps and then promptly fictionalized. If you’re from Cantril, Fairmont, or Blue Earth, I apologize in advance for what I’ve done to your hometowns.  
> SPOILERS: None. AU! *fistpump* Well, okay, there are a couple of mild ones for _Star Trek: The Voyage Home_ and 5x04 ‘The End’.  
>  THINGS RESEARCHED: How to kick open a door, the histories of a few discount department stores, names of female rock stars (pre 1980s), how long a car can idle, the anatomy of Catholic churches, driving routes (as always).  
> NEW TAGS: Garth Fitzgerald  
> NOTES: Oh my God work lately, you guys, work lately is _insane_. I think it should calm down in the next few weeks, so I should be able to get back on my usual writing schedule. I’m sorry! For the time being I’ll try really hard to resist the temptation to end chapters on cliffhangers. And I made this one extra long, just in case. :)

They end up getting separate rooms that night. Mary would prefer to be able to keep an eye on Dean - not because she thinks he’ll do anything rash but because she knows she’ll spend the night worrying about whether he’s okay - but she can understand him needing a bit of space after the rollercoaster day they’ve had.

And it’s not like they get to the motel and then split up. They get takeout and eat in Dean’s room while he finds _Star Trek_ on his computer, and then they pile onto the bed and watch it. Dean’s right, it _is_ a good movie, although they have to keep pausing so he can explain what happened in the movies before it. 

All in all, it’s a severely-needed break from reality. Even though her worry for Sam is still simmering away under the surface, Mary feels a lot better after focusing on the fictional adventures of time-traveling spacefarers for a few hours and Dean seems to be more upbeat as well. She’s a little less uncertain about leaving his room to go sleep in her own, and after a moment of internal debate she doesn’t even disable the car before turning in.

She calls Sam before going to bed. She’s glad that everything on his end seems to have turned out all right, and she believes he’s okay since both he and Cas have assured her, but some of Cas’s more frantic texts still have her pretty nervous. She’d known that Sam was mixed up about the whole Gadreel thing, and justifiably so, but she’s starting to worry that it’s worse than she’d initially thought.

“Seriously, I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Sam says, sounding a little sheepish. “Cas gave me a bit of a smackdown afterwards.”

She should probably check in with Cas, too, once she’s off the phone with Sam. Mary starts to feel a headache coming on. She can barely sort _herself_ out most days - she’s hardly qualified to untwist someone else’s brain.

Well. The least she can do is try.

“What does ‘extracting Grace’ even mean, anyway?” Mary asks. She really doesn’t know, but she can guess that it’s a painful and dangerous process. She’s hoping that playing a little bit dumb will help her figure out where Sam’s head is at a little more accurately.

“Well, it’s kind of interesting, actually,” Sam says. “I’d always thought that Grace was kind of an intangible thing - I mean, I knew it could exist in a concrete form, but I hadn’t figured out that it had an actual location in the body, just like an organ does.”

Mary remembers Cas slitting Theo’s throat and winces. “Yeah? Where is it?”

“The neck - near the spine, I think,” Sam says. “Although if you cut an angel badly enough anywhere else on the body they let off this white glow, and you can kill them with a stab through the chest, so maybe the neck is just where it’s strongest or something and then the rest of it extends throughout the body? I’ve seen an angel absorb her Grace through the mouth, so maybe it’s tied in to the respiratory system somehow. I should ask Cas to explain it.”

“So how do you extract it?” Mary asks, praying that the answer isn’t something along the lines of ‘take a knife and start cutting’. Cas could certainly heal Sam from something like that and it could explain why it upset him so -

No. Don’t think about it.

“Oh… with a syringe,” Sam says, his voice losing some of its academic enthusiasm.

That’s less bloody than Mary had feared, but given the change in Sam’s tone it still couldn’t have been pleasant. “Pretty painful, huh?” She says sympathetically.

Sam hesitates for a beat. “Well, it wasn’t too bad at first. But there wasn’t enough, so I had Cas go a little deeper, and that kind of hurt.”

Mary mentally upgrades ‘kind of’ to ‘a lot’. “Was that what Cas was upset at you for?”

“Yeah,” Sam says quietly. “It was unfair to ask him to do it, I get that, but I hadn’t thought it would bother him so much. He’s always been pretty hardcore in the past. I figured, you know, he would think it was worth it. But he got kind of worked up about that, too.”

“Yeah, some of his texts alluded to that,” Mary says neutrally. _Why must Winchesters always run towards death?_ Cas had asked. _I dislike hurting others_ had also made an appearance, which gives her a pretty good idea of both how much pain Sam was in and how dangerous the operation was. The degeneration of Cas’s texting skills said a lot about his mental state, too. She’s not surprised he had gotten angry with Sam afterwards.

It’s a little disheartening to realise that at least until recently Cas had been bang alongside the idea of sacrificing whatever was necessary in the pursuit of a particular goal. She’s glad he’s moved away from it now, but she can only imagine how he, Sam, and Dean might have egged each other on in the past.

“Look, Sam,” Mary says tentatively, “I understand how it can seem like doing whatever you have to is necessary. _Believe_ me, I understand it. But do you realise why it upset him? Why it upset me, too?”

Sam is silent for a long moment. “Some things are worth the price,” he says finally.

“Maybe not for everybody left behind,” Mary says as gently as possible.

“You weren’t left behind!” Sam snaps. “ _We_ were!” He sucks in a breath, shocked at himself. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean to.”

Mary concentrates on breathing for a moment. She can’t say she hasn’t been expecting to hear something like that from one of her kids, although it has been long enough coming that she’d started to let her guard down a little. 

“I talked to Missouri,” she says when she’s pretty sure the pain can’t be heard in her voice. “She told me a little bit about how your Dad raised you. I’m so sorry, baby.” It’s so inadequate. So _late_.

“It wasn’t -” he cuts himself off and goes silent. “Mom,” he says finally, plaintively, his voice hushed, “It’s just... Dad always told us that killing monsters, saving people, that was what was important. Whatever we had to do, we should do. And I - I used to think that was crap, and it wasn’t what I wanted, and then I started to think that maybe he was right. Dean _always_ believed him. And then I had the chance, Mom, I had the chance to fix everything - everything I’d done, everything that had gone wrong. I could have closed Hell. No more demons, no more deals, _nothing_. It would have been _gone_. Do you have any idea how many people it would have saved? How much it would have put right? And Dean, Dean didn’t let me, and I don’t understand _why_. Our whole lives, everything up until that point, why wouldn’t he want to do it? Why would he think it was too much to ask? Right up to tricking me into saying yes to an _angel?_ It would have - it would have been a good end. For me. I was ready.” He stops, breathing hard, as if he’s winded and a little surprised by how much has just come out. 

Mary has no idea how to respond. There is so much in what Sam just said that she doesn’t feel she fully understands, and there is so much that frightens her. 

At the same time, she can understand his confusion. If someone gave her the choice to save the world with her death, she’d agree in a heartbeat. Hell, she’d agree if it just meant saving her kids. It seems like such an obvious move.

“I can see both of your sides on this one, Sammy,” she says reluctantly. “Don’t get me wrong - Dean was wrong to trick you and take the choice away from you. He was. But I can understand why he did it, just like I can see why you wanted to make that choice.”

“It was me versus the _world_ , Mom,” Sam says, bewildered.

“I know, kiddo. And I would have been willing to die for it, too. But if I was standing there watching _you_ do it, I’m not sure I’d have been able to let you either. It’s not logical, it’s… instinct.”

“ _Parental_ instinct,” Sam argues, “but Dean’s not my parent, he’s my brother. And I know he’s always looked out for me, but the number of awful, awful things we’ve let happen because we were hung up on being _family_ and everything you have to do for your _family_ \- it’s just, it’s not healthy, Mom. And I used to think I could predict what he’d do, but I can’t. He lied to me for _months_. What am I supposed to do now? How can I even trust him?”

Mary puts her head down on her knees, weighed down by Sam’s betrayal and Dean’s self-loathing. This is such a mess - even more of one than she’d suspected. She has no idea what to do. She’s jumped so fast from soothing her children’s bumped heads and scraped knees into trying to sort out ridiculously complex adult problems and she has no idea how to cope. She can feel panic and despair welling up in her throat until she can hardly breathe. She doesn’t even know what most of the events Sam’s referring to _are_. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know. I can understand how betrayed you feel, and I don’t know how to fix that. All I know is how hurt you both are right now.”

“How is he?” Sam asks grudgingly after a moment of frustrated silence.

Mary hesitates. “A little bit self-destructive,” she says finally.

Sam gives a bitter laugh. “I bet. Look, Mom, I’m going to see if I can get some sleep, okay? Keep an eye on Dean. Don’t let him get you into anything you can’t handle.”

“I’ll be careful,” Mary says. God, she’s such a failure. Sam had seemed reasonably upbeat when she started talking to him, and now he’s going to bed angry and depressed. _Awesome_ parenting. Really top-notch. “You be careful too, okay, sweetheart? Sleep well.”

“Sleep well,” Sam echoes back.

Mary drops the dead phone on the bed and fists her hands in her hair. _God._ She still needs to call Cas and she doesn’t even know what to say to him. Her head is so full from everything that’s going on she can barely think straight. It’s so much easier when she’s just trying to kill something.

She goes to the bathroom and splashes cold water on her face. It only makes her feel marginally better, but it’s enough to fool her into convincing herself she can try calling Cas next. If nothing else, she needs to warn him that Sam’s likely to be out of sorts.

He picks up quickly and sounds alert, even though it’s starting to get pretty late. She frowns a little, momentarily distracted by the idea that Cas might not even _need_ to sleep now that he’s an angel, and then shakes it off. There are more important things to focus on by far.

“Hey, Cas, I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” he says, and as much as she can tell from his monotone without being able to see his body language, he does mean it. “This afternoon was a momentary aberration and Sam and I discussed it afterwards. Everything has been cleared up.”

“I’m glad you got to talk,” Mary says. “I just got off the phone with Sam, actually. I think I left him pretty upset. I’m sorry about that.”

Cas sighs. “Winchesters have a penchant for being upset and refusing to acknowledge it in a way that makes sense,” he says wearily. “It’s progress of a sort to be forewarned. I shall be vigilant.”

Mary smiles a little - she can guess that Cas’s previous confusion was only half due to Winchester stoicism. The rest probably came from Cas being Cas. “What did you and Sam talk about, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind,” Cas says. “You’re my ally in this and it is reasonable to share intelligence. We discussed the nature of sacrifice and atonement, and how the ends do not always justify the means. I tried to make him see that sometimes the best way to recover from having made mistakes is to continue on with good work rather than to seek self-punishment. He seemed to take the discussion to heart, although I don’t know if it will ultimately be enough to convince him. I required some very harsh lessons before I worked it out for myself.”

“Well, thanks for giving it a shot,” Mary says. It sounds like Cas got a lot further than she did, anyway.

“Of course. Sam’s my friend,” Cas says, sounding surprised by her gratitude. “May I ask what your conversation was about?”

Mary grimaces. “How angry he is at Dean for the Gadreel thing, and how confused he is by Dean’s refusal to let him sacrifice himself. He says he can’t trust Dean any more and I think he’s a little scared by how much Dean’s willing to do to protect him. I wasn’t able to do much to help him with any of it.”

“I’m not sure I’d fare much better,” Cas says quietly. “I spent an entire year once lying to them both just because I couldn’t bear the thought of drawing them into a war I didn’t think they should have to fight. I still don’t entirely understand how they’ve forgiven me for my own myriad betrayals.”

“Have they always been this…” Mary trails off. ‘Broken’ seems too defeatist, ‘damaged’ too mild.

“The underlying fissures have been there for quite some time, I think,” Castiel says gently. “This is the most hurt I’ve seen them, at least as far as their relationship with each other goes. They’ve forgiven much before this, although sometimes it took a while.”

“Do you think they can get past it?” Mary asks, heart in her mouth.

Cas thinks for a while before he responds. “They have you now, which I think will help,” he says cautiously, “for reasons of symbolism if not genuine affection. They have also proven more likely to reunite if there is an enemy to be fought against, and we have plenty of those. I would say there is a chance.”

“Well, I guess that’s better than nothing,” Mary mutters, rubbing her forehead. She’s not really sure what to do about ‘symbolism if not genuine affection’, but she guesses that as long as Sam and Dean sort themselves out it doesn’t really matter if they love her or just the idea of her. It’s a lonely thought, but not a breaking one, and she can certainly understand why it might happen that way.

“May I ask how Dean is doing?” Cas says.

Mary sighs. “Not great, but I think I managed to back him off the ledge a little today. Cas, what do you know about the mark of Cain?”

Cas breathes in sharply. “Why has that come up?”

“We met him. He tried to give it to Dean so Dean could use whatever weapon killed the Knights of Hell to kill Abaddon.”

“Explain everything,” Cas says roughly.

Mary walks him through the events of the last two days, including as many details as she can remember even if they don’t seem relevant. She’s enough out of her depth that she’s not certain what’s important and what isn’t.

“And then he just let you go?” Cas asks. “That’s… unexpected. And worrying.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t wild about it either,” Mary says grimly. “And he seemed really taken aback by the idea that the angels had resurrected me. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Cas says, troubled. “The Mark of Cain is legendary amongst angels, and undiscussed to the point of taboo. I don’t know what its effects are or what effect it would have on Dean, but I think it was very good that you stopped him from taking it. And I don’t know what Cain’s motivations could have been. Both letting you go and agreeing to fight so many demons seems very out of character.”

“Great,” Mary says wearily. “Look, Cas, how about we sleep on it? I’m sorry, I’m just starting to crash here.” The clock by the bedside says it’s nearly three in the morning. Given the way things have been going for them lately, she’s going to go out on a limb and guess that getting sleep when she can is a good idea.

“Of course,” Cas says immediately. “I apologize. I’ve lost track of human needs more quickly than I had anticipated.”

“How _is_ your borrowed Grace treating you?”

“It’s functioning adequately,” Cas says neutrally. “I will leave you to your rest.”

More troubling news, but Mary’s too exhausted and too overwhelmed to be able to worry about it. She shoves the phone under her pillow and collapses into the bed. They have enough immediate dangers to focus on that Cas’s unusual Grace is just going to have to take a backseat until it becomes an actual problem.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes to the sound of Dean screaming.

It’s still dark out, but she’d mapped her room carefully and stashed her gear in the usual places before going to bed. She doesn’t waste time turning on the lights as she snatches up her gun and angel blade and rolls out of bed, running through a list of possible enemies in her head as she goes: Crowley, Abaddon, Cain, angels, garden variety monsters - she’s betting on something bad, though, to make Dean scream like that. 

There’s no sign of anyone in the hallway, although Mary only spares a fraction of attention for the observation before dedicating herself entirely to getting into Dean’s room. The door is shut and there’s no sign of damage to it, which can’t be good. Mary upgrades the list of potential threats to someone who can get through warding: Crowley and Abaddon are probably out, as are the angels. That leaves Cain, who she’s pretty sure she can’t kill, or something entirely different that she hasn’t been able to anticipate. She moves faster.

It only takes her a split second after getting into the room to realise that Dean’s having a nightmare, not being attacked. He’s not screaming anymore, but the way he’s twisted up on the bed and the small, broken noises he’s making are pretty clear signs. Well-trained by life with John, Mary snatches up a water bottle from the table and dashes the contents in Dean’s face.

He slams himself back against the headboard, gasping in shock and confusion, instinctively pulling out his gun and training it on her. Mary stands very still, hands carefully out to her sides.

“Just me, kiddo,” she says calmly. “It’s Mom. You were having a nightmare. Sammy’s fine and everything’s okay.”

The tension leaves him in a rush and he slumps, dropping the gun on the bedspread and putting one hand over his eyes.

“Shit. Sorry, Mom. I’m fine.”

Mary eases her way over to the bed and sits down, near enough to touch him if she needs to but far enough away to be unthreatening. “It’s okay, sweetie. You want to talk about it?”

Dean shakes his head, still not looking up. “It’s nothing. Sorry, I don’t usually make noise.”

Which is its own realm of horribly troubling, but there you go. She eyes him, trying to figure out what expression he’s hiding behind his hand. “It’s really okay, Dean. Why don’t you spend the rest of the night in my room?”

“Seriously, I’m fine,” Dean says shortly. Aha - embarrassed. Probably still unsettled by the nightmare, too, but mostly embarrassed. “I’m a big boy, Mom, I’ll be fine in my own room.”

“Still, it’s probably not a bad idea -”

“I don’t need to be freaking coddled, Mom!” Dean says, finally looking up now that annoyance has overtaken chagrin.

“ - since I kind of broke your door,” Mary finishes.

Dean glances over at the doorway. His eyebrows raise. “Oh. Wow.”

It’s very broken. 

“Yeah,” he concedes, slowly. “Okay, we should probably share.”

They gather up his things in silence. Dean keeps glancing over at the door and frowning. When they walk out into the hallway, he pauses long enough to finger the splintered edges of the wood. “Seriously?”

“I thought someone was hurting you,” Mary says, shrugging.

“You’re not even wearing boots.”

Her right foot’s starting to complain about that, too, although she doesn’t think she did any lasting damage. It should be fine as long as she’s careful with it for the next few days. “I thought someone was hurting you,” she repeats.

Dean’s very quiet for the rest of the night.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dean wakes _her_ up the next morning.

“You were arguing with somebody,” he says, looking a little amused. “It seemed to be getting kind of heated.”

Mary presses her face into her pillow and groans. The dream had slipped away as soon as she woke up and she really would have preferred that he’d just let her sleep, but the tiny smile on his face does give her a little hope. “Probably dreaming about your father, then,” she jokes.

The morning is a pretty quiet one. Sam hasn’t texted, and Mary spends several moments agonizing over her phone before deciding to give him a little space before she tries to talk to him again. Dean seems thoughtful, although it’s contemplative rather than depressed, and Mary herself is glad for the quiet. Having until recently been the parent of an infant she’s well-trained in the art of fitful and interrupted sleep, but even she’s starting to drag a little.

“Do you have a plan for today?” Mary asks as they huddle around the room’s tiny desk-slash-table with cups of watery complimentary coffee. “It might not be a bad idea to head back to the bunker, see if we can look into Cain and the Mark a little more.”

It’s hardly the most subtle foray, but she doesn’t feel up to anything else. Dean starts shaking his head the moment she says the word ‘bunker’, anyway.

“Well, then,” Mary says, disappointed but not surprised, “Cas and I were going to go check out a possible cache of angel lore. Want to look into it?” It’s less of a pressing matter now that Cas is angeled up again, but it could still come in handy. The angels are definitely working up to all-out warfare sometime soon unless something is done, and they still know far less about Muriel’s plans than they should. Mary’s not even sure where to begin with that last one, and it’s not like they have an actual plan to deal with an angel war or even a prayer of being effective against that many superpowered opponents anyway. But any little bit helps, right?

Dean grimaces. “Can’t we just find something to kill instead?”

Mary’s first reaction is _God yes_ , followed quickly by _well,_ this _is probably a really bad idea._ “How about we head in the general direction and look for jobs on the way?” she compromises.

“Fair enough,” Dean sighs. “Where’s the lore?”

“Um… Blue Earth, Minnesota,” Mary remembers. “There was a pastor there, apparently, who -”

“Pastor Jim?” Dean says, nearly dropping his coffee. “Jim Murphy?”

“You know him?” Mary asks, surprised. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, still looking stunned. “We used to stay with him all the time when we were kids, if Dad was on a hunt and Bobby wasn’t talking to him.” He frowns a little. “He had a bolt hole in the church basement where he kept a lot of his stuff, I guess it’s not impossible that nobody would have cleaned it out yet. Caleb died right after he did.”

“That’s pretty much what Missouri said,” Mary says, watching him carefully. The memory can’t be a very good one, but Dean seems to have some distance from it, at least. “Want to give it a shot?” Honestly, she’s even more curious to see it now that she knows Sam and Dean spent time there as children. The angel lore is more of a bonus.

“Sure,” Dean says absently. “Yeah, let’s go. Probably a good idea.”

“First, though, we need to stop for some supplies,” Mary says firmly. “I need clean underwear like you wouldn’t believe.”

Dean chokes on his coffee.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Of course, it doesn’t go entirely to plan.

Dean finds her a discount department store - apparently Ames went out of business, which is too bad - and loiters pointedly outside while she hits the women’s department and the toiletries section. In deference to his embarrassment, Mary gathers her supplies as quickly as possible. 

When she rejoins him in the parking lot he’s leaning up against his car, reading a newspaper and frowning.

“We’re definitely going to have to take the scenic route to Pastor Jim’s,” he says, handing the paper over.

It’s a report of a mass murder a few towns over. Mary sighs. She can’t deny that a straightforward hunt would be a relief right now, but it feels uncomfortably close to irresponsibility. At least it’s more or less on the way to Blue Earth, over in southeastern Iowa, and she still has her fake badge.

Dean has fake IDs for her as well, it turns out. He hands over a cigar box filled with a mishmash of different badges - law enforcement, animal control, press. Some of them are his and Sammy’s, but a lot of them are hers.

“It seemed like a good idea,” Dean says, shrugging it off even though it must have taken a lot of work. He’s blushing slightly. “I wasn’t sure when we’d run into you, but I figured they’d come in handy.”

They definitely will, as long as nobody notices that her aliases are mostly made up of names like Belinda Carlisle, Joan Jett, and Pat Benatar.

“Cass Elliot?” She says, squinting at a badge for something called Homeland Security. “Mama Cass, really?”

“You’d be surprised by what people don’t notice,” Dean says, shrugging. “And it makes them easy to remember.”

Fair point, and she certainly hadn’t noticed anything weird with his ‘Van Halen’ alias back in the day.

They make it to Cantril about an hour later, and the site of the massacre is immediately obvious - not just because Cantril is a tiny town, but because it looks like the county sheriff called in all the emergency services personnel he could get his hands on to help him deal with the massacre.

And it is a massacre. There are about thirty bodies sprawled in the road and the parking lot between the post office and the hardware store, all of them bloodied and motionless. It takes Mary a moment to be able to see past the carnage to the ashy wing shapes burnt into the cracked asphalt.

“Jesus,” she breathes. “Dean, is this - is this _normal?”_

“Definitely not,” Dean says grimly. “Biggest fight I ever saw the end of was maybe five, seven angels. I’m surprised the town is still standing, frankly.”

It isn’t - not completely, anyway. Now that she’s over her initial shock, she’s noticing the backdrop of the fight a little more and it is definitely weird. There are shattered windows and broken walls, which in retrospect are to be expected, but there’s also a giant tree growing _through_ the town’s only stoplight and there’s a cow in a nearby field who appears to have been turned inside out. 

It looks like the war has started. 

“See if you can find any sigils,” she says, shaking off the weirdness of the surroundings as much as she can. “Cas and I found some before and it might let us know who won or if there’s a new player at work.”

Dean nods and flashes his badge at the deputy standing by the police tape. 

“X-Files?” The deputy says hopefully.

Mary frowns, but Dean seems to know what he’s talking about. “‘Fraid not, we were just in the area on another case. Mind if we look around?”

The deputy’s shoulders slump. “Might as well. We don’t have a frigging clue.” She glances back at the battlefield and flinches.

“Do you recognize any of these people?” Mary asks her, as gently as she can under the circumstances. “Are they from this town?”

She shakes her head. “That’s the weird part. Well, part of the weird part. They just came into town and everything went crazy. I mean, I think maybe one of them is one of the Morse kids? From Bloomfield? But I don’t know. They weren’t acting normal and I don’t think they were speaking English.” She shudders.

“Thanks for your help,” Mary says, patting her on the shoulder. Dean’s crouched down by the wall of the hardware store, and she picks her way around the ash and blood to join him. Once she gets close she can see that there are silhouettes etched into the building’s siding, like the shadows left after the atom bombs were dropped on Japan. She can easily make out the shape of huge, badly tattered wings.

“Sigil or really weird blood spatter?” Dean asks as she gets close, pointing at a space between two bodies.

Mary squints at it. “Sigil, I think. I’ll send it to Cas.” She fidgets with her phone for a moment, caught between knowing such a thing should be possible but having no idea how to actually do it, until Dean takes pity on her and sends the picture himself. “The deputy says all these guys are out-of-towners.”

Dean nods and starts walking further into the crime scene, scanning the ground for more sigils. He has to step to one side to avoid a puddle of what looks to be permanently molten glass. It’s rippling in a way that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with wind or ground tremors. “Skirmish then, I guess, or maybe an ambush. This is a crappy place for an actual battle.” He frowns. “Does the placement of these bodies seem kind of weird to you?”

Mary forces herself to detach and analyse. Now that Dean mentions it, the whole setup does look a little odd. There are a few blood stains that don’t seem quite right, and she spots at least one set of burnt wing shadows that isn’t anywhere near a body. “I think we need to find some higher ground,” she says slowly.

The only high ground available is the roof of the hardware store, but it’s enough. From up there, they can see that the bodies are laid out in a definite pattern. Dean takes a picture and sends it to Cas.

Cas calls them back immediately. “Where are you?”

“Tiny place in Iowa - Cantril,” Dean says, holding his phone up between them so they can both participate. “What can you tell me about the symbols?”

Cas sighs. “That’s the strange thing. The one in blood that you sent me earlier was is a banishing sigil and something I would expect to find on a battlefield. Whoever tried to use it was killed before he could finish drawing it, but I think it was intended to target followers of Bartholomew.”

“And the - the one in bodies?” Mary asks, trying not to look over the edge of the roof by accident. She’s got a strong stomach, and she’s seen more than most, but the idea that someone took the time to shift that many corpses around to write something is unexpectedly disturbing. Not to mention that the more she looks around the more she notices things that are just _wrong_ , like the way all the signs in the vicinity are no longer in English. Or letters.

“That one confuses me,” Cas admits. “It’s an old symbol. A mourning.”

“Well, that makes sense after a battle,” Dean points out.

“Not that kind of mourning,” Cas says. “I mean yes, those deaths are lamented, but this symbol is deeper than that. More all-encompassing. It’s the kind of mourning you do when it feels like there is nothing left alive - no beings, no ideas, no hope. It’s a cry of despair.”

Mary shivers. “So who won, and who used it?”

Cas is quiet for a long moment. “It’s difficult to say. No angel would use that sigil lightly. The last time I know of it being used was after the Fall, when Lucifer was cast down from Heaven and his followers were banished with him. It was… the repercussions of that are difficult to explain to someone who isn’t an angel, but it was… devastating. Not only to the angels, but to Heaven itself. There were many who thought it meant the end of everything.”

“And now the angels have been cast out again,” Dean says quietly.

“Yes,” Cas says. It’s barely audible. “Under these circumstances, I suppose it isn’t a surprise to see it.”

Mary and Dean trade glances, worried by Cas’s tone. “Do you have any idea who might have done it?” Mary asks.

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Mary says, hoping it sounds reassuring. “Well, we’ll poke around here a little more and see if we can find anything else. Is Sam home?”

“Yes. He’s in the kitchen.”

Good. At least Cas isn’t home alone with his thoughts. It feels a little unfair to hope that Sam will be able to give him some support, given how mixed up she knows he is himself, but maybe he’ll feel a little better if he has someone else to take care of. It always worked for Mary. “Okay. Go find Sam and tell him what we’re up to. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

After he hangs up they go back down to the street and walk through the bodies. Mary tries to pay attention to every detail she can, but her mind is preoccupied. It’s harder than she’d thought to know that Cas is upset and far away from her - harder even than when she’d left Sam behind. She loves Sam, but she can imagine exactly what Cas looks like right now - drawn in, shoulders tense, burying his misery under whatever task he’s managed to get his hands on. The urge to find him and give him a hug is almost unbearable.

She’s a professional, though, inasmuch as hunters can be professional anything, so she puts it resolutely out of her mind and dedicates herself to cataloging any possible item of interest as they work their way through the bodies.

There isn’t much to see, besides the increasingly surreal collateral damage. The bodies - the vessels - are abandoned now, and there’s nothing to indicate which angels had possessed them or what side they‘d been on. All Mary sees is human details: football jerseys and grass stains and carefully braided hair and flannel pajamas and wedding rings. Angels don’t discriminate when it comes to occupation or physical type, apparently. 

Dean finds her standing over the body of a girl wearing a silver pendant who couldn’t have been out of her teens and ushers her gently away. The deputy is throwing up into a trashcan and doesn’t see them leave.

It’s very quiet in their motel room that night. Dean finds them another _Star Trek_ movie to watch, but neither of them pay much attention and they turn in early. Mary briefly considers trying to call Sam or Cas, but just thinking about it makes her feel exhausted, so she excuses herself from the responsibility by reasoning that the chances of her making everything worse by trying to talk to either of them when she’s feeling so off are greater than the chances of her actually fixing anything. She falls asleep to the sound of Dean tossing and turning and occasionally trying to punch his pillow into a better shape.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_She dreams of a tiny blonde woman with big brown eyes. The woman comes into Mary’s room and sits down on the edge of the bed._

_“I don’t think this world can be saved,” she says sadly, and strokes Mary’s hair as Mary cries for all the vessels who’d said yes without really knowing what they were getting into._

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes up the next morning feeling groggy and tired. It takes her a moment to realise that what’s woken her is the sound of her cell phone ringing. She fumbles for it as Dean groans and hides his head under his pillow on the next bed over.

“Hello?” Mary says, not even bothering to open her eyes and check the caller ID.

“Hi, Mom,” Sam says. 

Mary sits up, adrenaline and panic overcoming her weariness. Is he still upset? Is he angry with her? What if she makes things worse again? “Hi, sweetheart. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Sam says, and she finally registers the tiredness in his voice. “Well, as fine as can be expected. Cas and I have been up all night and let me tell you, do _not_ assume you can keep up with an angel on a research binge.”

“I hear they don’t need to sleep,” Mary offers cautiously. It’s not like Cas would have slept last night anyway. She remembers the way he’d stayed up all night with his sigil research when they were travelling together.

“They don’t,” Sam sighs, “but I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep once we got going, anyway. After Cas talked to you yesterday we started looking to see if anything like the battle in Cantril had been reported anywhere else.”

Mary throws pillows at Dean until he sits up and pays attention. “Can I put you on speaker phone, sweetheart?”

Sam gives an irritated huff of air at being forced to interact with Dean but concedes. “Yeah, fine.”

Mary winces, but goes ahead and does it. “Okay. What did you find?”

“A lot,” Sam says grimly. “And all over. Starting about five days ago there have been what look like skirmishes in a couple different places - small towns, big cities, you name it. People have even gone to investigate weird lights in the sky and found dead bodies in more rural areas. We’ve been able to get our hands on pictures from a couple of them and Cas says it mostly looks like Malachi and Bartholomew going at it. No sign of Muriel or anyone new that we can tell without going in person.”

“How many deaths so far?” Mary asks. She doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“A lot,” Sam says heavily. “Mostly vessels, but there’s been some collateral damage too. There was a fight in Fort Worth last night that got pretty out of control. Best guess is that it was the first all-out battle so far and most of the cultural district was leveled before it was over, and there were some pretty weird side effects that stretched out even further. Cas has been trying to put it together from a tactician’s point of view and he says it’s pretty disorganised - some of it’s classic angelic warfare, and some of it’s just bizarre.”

“Any bizarre ones near us?” Dean asks. “We could check it out, report back.”

“Yeah, actually,” Sam says, and if he’s feeling something particular about talking to his brother for the first time since Gadreel he keeps it out of his voice. “There’s a weird one in Fairmont, Minnesota that you could look into.”

“Well, we were planning to head to Minnesota anyway,” Mary says “Has Cas come up with anything more about that mourning sigil?”

Sam hesitates. “Not really,” he says. “He’s been looking into it, but it kind of seems to unnerve him. He won’t say why but I get the feeling that it’s something angels don’t like to talk about. You know, culturally.”

“Fair enough,” Mary says, wishing again that she could sit Cas down and figure out where his head’s at. This parenting from a distance thing is total bullshit. “Let us know what else you find - we’ll head for Fairmont and report back.”

Sam agrees and hangs up. Mary tosses the phone down on the bedside table and absently reaches over to smooth down Dean’s sleep-rumpled hair, trying to breathe through the crushing feeling of everything they’re up against. How do you fight against something that can level an entire city? Not for the first time, she wishes her parents were still around. She doesn’t think they would know what to do, necessarily, but it would still be nice to know that there were more people on her side.

She finishes straightening Dean’s hair and leans back. “Do you boys know any other hunters we could bring in on this? More manpower wouldn’t go amiss and they’d probably appreciate the warning.”

Dean rubs his forehead, looking just as overwhelmed. “I don’t - I guess, I guess I can start getting the word out. I’ll call a few people. This is all…” he sighs, frustrated. “I’m going to take a shower, then let’s get on the road.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary drives so that Dean can concentrate on the phone. She listens in as he repeats the same message to each person he calls: supernatural war, keep your head down, call if you see any sigils. Most of the conversations are over quickly, the person on the other end of the phone acknowledging the heads-up with a weary sort of resignation and then promising to call a few others. A guy named Walt takes some convincing, mostly because he seems to think that Dean has it out for him for some reason, and Dean spends a decent chunk of time lecturing someone named Krissy on her role as an observer _only_ , but otherwise it goes pretty smoothly.

It’s also over a lot faster than Mary would have expected. She’s hoping that’s because each of the people Dean’s spoken to are going to go on to call a bunch of others, but she remembers Tara’s comment: _We’ve lost too many, the last few years._

When Mary had been growing up hunters hadn’t been exactly _common_ , but there were a lot of them and they’d tended to keep in touch to a borderline obsessive degree. They were usually spread out geographically, the better to avoid doubling up on a job by accident, but there were always gathering points where they could convene, check in, and trade rumours and tips. Mary can remember sitting under a picnic table as a child, listening in as her parents discussed the hunting world with visitors, stifling giggles when someone surreptitiously passed her a treat or a hex bag to play with. It had been a weird childhood, but not a bad one, for all that her greatest wish as a young woman had been to leave it all behind and flee in search of normalcy.

See how well _that_ had worked out. She shakes herself free of the past and turns her attention back to her driving.

They arrive in Fairmont a few hours later and head for the crime scene first. They find it after a few minutes of driving, and even though the bodies have been removed they can tell it’s different from the one in Cantril the moment they get out of the car. The smell of sulfur is so strong that Mary gags, immediately burying her nose in her sleeve. “God!”

Dean grabs a tub of Vick’s from the glove compartment and tosses it over. Mary smears some on her top lip and the overwhelming stench of rotten eggs vanishes under a tide of menthol. It’s an old trick, used by hunters and medical examiners alike, and it makes her eyes water but at least it doesn’t make her nauseous.

“So,” Dean says drily, “first guess: not a Heaven-specific throwdown.”

They don’t find much at the scene beyond some structural damage, little heaps on sulfur, and spots where someone clearly tried to wash blood off the pavement and failed. There isn’t any of the reality-warping detritus that was left behind by the angelic battle, just straight-up property damage. It would be nice if that was a comforting discovery.

The local sheriff’s office yields a little more information, provided by the harried office assistant running the front desk.

“We just need a little information,” Mary says when they show her their badges and the assistant throws down her stack of paperwork in overworked disgust. “We won’t take up much of your time, I promise.”

“Good,” the assistant says shortly. “Because between the press and the other LEOs and the random curious freaks, I don’t have any. What do you need?”

“Well, this might sound a little strange,” Dean says, “but I need to know a little about the state of the bodies. Were any of their eyes destroyed?”

“What? God!” the assistant says, revolted. “No, it was a gang fight or something, they just tore into each other. _Eyes_ melted, Jesus. What the hell kind of cases are you guys working?”

“Really weird ones,” Dean says, edging towards the door. “Thank you for your time.”

“Verdict?” Mary says in an undertone as they leave. She’s a little surprised that Dean didn’t want to see any crime scene photos or anything, but she trusts that he knows what he’s doing.

“Melted eyes would have been angel versus demon,” Dean says. “I’m thinking this is straight-up demon versus demon, which means Crowley and Abaddon. Like we didn’t have enough to deal with already.”

“It explains why Cas doesn’t recognize some of the tactics being used, I guess,” Mary says. “So, two wars being fought. Wonder how long it’ll take them to start fighting each other?”

Dean sighs. “Can’t frigging wait.” He puts one hand over his face. “God. I am so fucking tired of being caught in the middle of this shit. Why can’t they fight somewhere else?”

Mary rubs his back, concerned by the dull tone in his voice. “We’ll figure it out, sweetheart.”

He shakes his head but straightens up a little, either reassured or resigned to having to endure it anyway. Mary’s pretty sure it’s the latter. “Let’s just get back to the car.”

They’ve almost made it when a sheriff’s deputy pulls into the parking lot and screeches to a halt next to them. “You the feds?” She asks, scrambling out of her squad car.

“Yeah, why?”

“Look, I’m sorry to ask this,” she says, and as she rounds the front of the car Mary can see that she’s in worse shape than the assistant inside. There are dark shadows under her eyes and her uniform is rumpled. “I need a favor. I don’t know what the hell the paperwork is for it or if it’s allowed or whatever but the sheriff died in the fight and I’ve only been a deputy for five months.”

“Okay, deep breath,” Mary says, glancing at the woman’s nametag. “What do you need, Lisa?” Hopefully it isn’t anything that she’d need an actual FBI agent for, since Mary’s pretty sure that if they say no Lisa’s going to cry and Mary can only deal with so many breakdowns at once. Her own included.

Lisa takes a deep breath as ordered and composes herself. “Sorry. It’s just, we sent some of the bodies to the coroner in Blue Earth since we were so overwhelmed here, you know? And I haven’t heard from the guy I sent with them. I can’t raise him on the radio and Jill tried calling the office and nobody’s picking up. I can’t spare anyone to go check in person. Could you make sure everything’s okay? Or send someone?”

Mary and Dean don’t even have to look at each other to realise they’re both feeling the same sense of foreboding. 

“Actually, we were headed over there anyway,” Mary says. “We’ll check into it for you.”

Lisa slumps in relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m sorry I don’t know what the paperwork for this is. I can call your supervisor or something?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it,” Dean says. “Just focus on your town, okay?”

Dean waits until they’re in the car and safely insulated from anyone who might overhear before asking, “What do you and Cas know about this angel lore? Is it something that might interest Heaven or Hell?”

Mary shrugs. “I don’t think so. Cas said that most human interpretations of angelic lore are wrong. And it’s been there for a while, so I don’t know why it would be of interest now.”

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Dean says sourly, starting the car.

The drive to Blue Earth is silent. Dean doesn’t even turn on the radio. Mary sends a quick text to Sam and Cas, letting them know that Fairmount was all demon and they’ve left to chase down a new lead, but doesn’t hear anything back. 

As they drive, she stares out the windows at the little towns they pass and wonders where the demons had gotten their hosts. Were they from these little towns? Were they like the angels, taken from all over? Demons don’t have to worry about consent, so they might be more likely to just take whoever was closest.

Some of the towns they pass are tiny. A demonic battle on the same scale as the angelic one in Cantril, or ever worse Fort Worth, would completely devastate the population. Mary’s spent her entire life visiting towns like these. Thirty people dying all at once would be disastrous. Catastrophic. 

Angels are at least limited by consent and the need to find acceptable vessels. A demonic war on top of everything else could escalate fast, especially if it spills out of Hell and ends up topside.

“Dean,” Mary says hesitantly, “what do you think will happen if this gets worse?”

Dean doesn’t answer, but he starts driving faster.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The second thing Mary notices when they arrive outside of Blue Earth is a battered car with an incredibly lanky man standing next to it, beaming at them.

The first thing she notices is the giant moat that cuts right across the road in front of them and vanishes into the distance on either side.

Dean skids to a stop. “What the - _Garth?”_

The lanky man bounces up to them and throws himself at Dean as soon as they get out of the car, and Mary is very nearly distracted by the _giant moat what the hell_ by watching Dean attempt to evade the embrace. She debates for a moment and then edges closer to the moat, listening to Dean’s conversation with half her attention.

“Garth, where the fuck have you been?”

It’s actually more of a trench than a moat, she guesses. There’s only a trickle of water down below and it looks to have been included more by accident than design.

“Canada, mon ami. There is some hinky stuff going on there, let me tell you.”

The sides of the trench are strange. She can’t see any sign of dig marks, which would indicate it’s been there for a while, but there’s also no sign of crumbling. The sides are almost perfectly smooth. It’s deeply unnatural.

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean says. He sounds pretty pissed, and Mary starts to pay more attention to his conversation. “Why haven’t you called? I thought you wanted to be the new Bobby, asshole, you can’t just leave.”

“I didn’t,” Garth says, sounding hurt. “I left Mrs. Tran in charge. She’s amazing with the law enforcement lines, let me tell you. And besides, international phonecalls aren’t cheap.”

There’s a long silence behind her. Mary abandons her investigation of the trench entirely and turns back. She doesn’t know a Mrs. Tran, but hadn’t somebody said that Kevin’s last name was Tran?

From the look on Dean’s face, whether or not Mrs. Tran is related to Kevin she met a similar end.

“What happened?” Garth says in a small voice, alarmed by Dean’s silence. “Are they okay?”

Dean shakes his head, and Garth’s expression crumples. It’s terrible to watch. Mary’s only known Garth for four minutes, and already watching his heart break is like seeing a puppy get kicked.

“So, uh, what are you doing here?” Dean asks uncomfortably.

“I swung by and visited Mackey on my way back to the houseboat and he said nobody had heard from Blue Earth in a while,” Garth says. “I got this far into checking it out and then you showed up.” He forces a smile. “So, who’s your lovely lady friend?”

Dean’s face goes utterly blank. “My mother.”

Garth blinks. Mary waves.

“Back from the dead,” she says. “Long story.” Most of which they don’t even know yet.

“Oh,” Garth says, rallying. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you!” He shakes her hand firmly. “Dean and Sam are wonderful boys.”

“Thank you,” Mary says gravely.

“All right, break it up,” Dean says gruffly, embarrassed. “Let’s find a way across this frigging moat.”

“Trench,” Garth and Mary say at the same time.

They find a downed tree a few hundred meters away which has fallen neatly right across the trench and is big enough to support all of them. There are even conveniently placed branches along the way to help them balance.

“Gosh, that’s convenient,” Dean says sarcastically, checking his weapons. They cross anyway. The unfortunate thing about traps, Mary has found, is that you often still need to find out who set them.

The far side of the tree puts them in a wooded area on the outskirts of a small residential neighborhood. They trek through the underbrush and out onto the street, watching their surroundings carefully. It’s very quiet - there’s no sound of car engines in the distance or children shouting or even someone being horribly murdered, which given their line of work wouldn’t be a total surprise. Everything is just… very, very still. 

“No birds,” Garth says uneasily, walking so close to Dean that he nearly trips. Dean growls and pushes him a little further away, which means he winds up tucked right against Mary. She’s still got decent range of movement and a good grip on her gun and angel blade, though, so she lets him be.

They leave the neighborhood and make their way out into a commercial street. A few yards in they come across their first clearly abandoned car, door open with the engine running, and the whole experience starts to slide from ‘unsettling’ into ‘creepy’.

“Tank’s almost on empty,” Dean says, poking his head into the car. “I’d guess it’s been running for at least a day.”

“Is that blood?” Garth asks, pointing with his gun.

They edge over to the other side of the street. There’s a bloody handprint on the window of the bookstore there and a smear on the front steps, but no sign of a body.

“Well, that’s creepy,” Mary says matter-of-factly.

“Familiar, too,” Dean says absently, and shakes his head when Mary raises her eyebrows at him. “It’s nothing. The church is a few streets this way.”

The closer they get to the center of town, the worse it gets. There are more abandoned cars, more indications of violence. They find a shotgun and a machete next to a fire hydrant, both caked in blood, and the number of broken windows increases.

“Dean? Why did you say this look familiar?” Mary asks quietly. She doesn’t smell sulfur, so demons are probably out. Would angels attack a town like this? Or is it something completely different? Between her and Dean they have regular and silver bullets, holy water, salt, a few knives, and two angel blades, plus whatever Garth’s got, but if it comes to a fight she’d prefer to not have to try each of those in sequence before (hopefully) finding a winning combination.

“It’s nothing,” Dean says harshly. “It’s not familiar. I was just - it’s not familiar.”

Okay then. “How far to the church?”

“Next street.”

They make it there without being attacked or seeing any sign of anything alive. The church is middle-sized and fairly unremarkable except for the condemned sign and the chain-link fence going all the way around it.

“They must have abandoned it after Pastor Jim died,” Dean says, shoulders slumping.

“It looks like there’s fire damage in the back,” Garth volunteers, venturing a few steps away from them.

Dean looks away, blinking. “He always said the wiring was shit.”

Mary squeezes his arm. It must be hard to see a place he’d loved left to rot like this. “It probably means there’s a good chance that his research is still here, as long as it wasn’t in the fire,” she reminds him.

“Yeah,” Dean says roughly. “Yeah. True. Let’s go in.”

They force their way through a gap in the fence and go in through the front door. Dean keeps his head down as they move through the narthex and into the nave, resolutely not looking up to see the damage that time has wrought on the building.

Mary looks for him. She’s always been fascinated by abandoned buildings, and in any case someone needs to keep an eye on the sightlines. It’s probably a good thing it’s her and not Dean, though. Besides the weather and fire damage, some kids have clearly gotten in and tagged the place.

“Boy, gang names have gotten worse since I was alive,” Mary jokes. “What is ‘Croatoan’ even supposed to mean?” 

Dean whips around. “Where do you see that?”

Taken aback by his tone, Mary points. It’s scrawled across the balcony in red paint.

Dean goes white. “We have to get out of here.” He grabs her arm and hustles her towards the door. “Garth, _move.”_

“Dean, what -”

“I’ll explain later,” Dean says tersely. His hand is shaking, he’s gripping her so tightly. “Shoot anything that isn’t us.”

“We didn’t see any -” Mary begins, truly alarmed by Dean’s reaction.

“They’re here somewhere,” Dean interrupts. “Keep your eyes open. We’re going to run as soon as we clear the fence.”

“The research -” Mary tries.

“Not worth it!” Dean barks. “Now fucking _move!”_

They run down the front stairs towards the fence. Dean reaches for the gap, but Garth throws out an arm to block him. “Wait!”

Mary catches sight of movement just before a creature emerges from the shadows by the church’s sign and lunges for Dean. It’s rotting and bloody, humanoid or once-human. Dean throws himself backwards, avoiding the thing’s grasping fingers by inches, and its attempts to reach him hold it still long enough for Mary to put a bullet between its eyes. It goes down immediately, which is moderately reassuring.

“Zombie?” Garth yelps. “It’s a zombie?”

“Can’t be - to kill zombies you need a silver stake, not a headshot,” Mary says absently. “Dean?”

“We have to find a way out of here,” Dean says, ignoring her completely. His voice is shaking.

“Look at the end of the street,” Garth says grimly.

Sure enough, there are more creatures appearing, probably drawn by the sound of the gunshot. They move fast for decomposing things. It won’t be long before they surround the fence and start finding a way in. “Around back?” Mary suggests.

“Go,” Dean says.

They sprint around the corner, only to be met by a sizeable hole in the fence and another creature standing on the other side of it. It starts climbing in as soon as it sees them, and from the movement in the scraggly bushes behind him he’s not alone. Mary shoots it, just in case, and it only takes a moment before two more creatures are climbing over the body towards the hole.

“Back to the front,” Mary gasps. Maybe if they get enough of a head start on the creatures and avoid making too much noise they can find a way through the fence and down the street -

“Where are they all _coming_ from?” Grath moans. There’s a crowd of the things now, getting closer to the fence with every second. They’re coming from everywhere - down the street, between the buildings, from underneath cars. Mary imagines how many of them they must have walked past on their war in and her skin crawls. The scent of blood and rotting meat is disgustingly heavy in the air.

“They’re the townspeople,” Dean says numbly. “It’s a virus.”

Mary immediately puts her sleeve over her nose and mouth. “Into the church!” It won’t take the things long to find a way through the fence. Maybe a door will last a little longer. Maybe even long enough for them to figure out how to fight back.

They scramble up the steps and into the narthex, slamming the door behind them. Mary and Garth immediately set themselves to pulling as much heavy stuff in front of the door as they can. Dean just stands there, staring.

Mary shoves a last chair into place and turns to him. “Dean, why aren’t you helping?”

“This isn’t right,” Dean says hollowly. She’s standing in front of him but he’s looking right through her. “It’s 2014 but you weren’t there. You weren’t there.” He focuses, horror dawning on his face. “Oh my God, you weren’t there _but I was._ It’s going to happen. Oh, fuck, it’s going to happen.”

Mary grabs him by the shirt and gives him a little shake. “Dean, honey, I don’t know what’s wrong but I need you to get a grip. We do not have time for this.”

“No wonder he was so messed up,” Dean says. “He had to watch you die again.”

Worrying, and more than a little creepy. Mary takes his face in her hands. “Dean, look at me. I need you to get a hold of yourself. I know that this seems really overwhelming and it doesn’t look like there’s a way out, but you know what to do.” She wraps his hand around the butt of his gun. “Shoot anything that isn’t us. Okay? Can you do that?”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Mary repeats back. “What do you need to do?”

“Shoot anything that isn’t us,” Dean says dutifully. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them he looks a little bit more like himself. “I’m fine. I know how to do this.”

“Good.” She steps back, eyeing their surroundings. “First we need to find somewhere that’s easier to defend. There are too many windows in here.”

“We could try the back,” Garth says. “There’s usually a rectory or a robing room or something. An office maybe.”

Something crashes against the door and they all jump.

“Do either of you have a cell phone?” Garth asks. “Mackey’s only a few towns over, maybe -”

“No service,” Dean says. Mary suppresses a wave of relief that he’s feeling together enough to start to help.

“Wouldn’t be much of a trap if we could get backup,” Mary sighs.

They run through the nave and into the back, their footfalls nearly drowned out by the constant crashes against the door. They skid through the side door and down a short hallway into a large office. It’s fire- and water-damaged and reeks of charcoal, but it should be easier to defend. Another crash and the sound of shattering glass tells Mary that her reservations about the windows were well-founded.

All three of them get to work barricading the door this time. There’s less furniture here, and most of it’s charred and brittle, but it’ll have to be good enough. They pile it up and retreat back into the center of the room.

“Too bad they don’t react to holy water,” Garth says, eyeing the jugs of it stored behind the door. Privately, Mary’s impressed they survived the fire. Maybe they’re just extra-powerful.

“How smart are these things?” Mary asks. “If we keep them from getting through the door for long enough, do you think they’ll forget we’re here?”

It’s a faint hope, and she’s not surprised when Dean dashes it immediately. 

“Some of them are smarter than others, depending on the strain, but none of them have been that dumb,” he says.

“Is there any chance we’re going to catch it?” Garth asks worriedly.

Dean’s jaw clenches. “It’s spread by contact - blood or saliva. Don’t let them bite you, don’t let them bleed into any open wounds.”

Mary nods, as if there’s a chance in Hell they’re actually going to be able to get out of this. She knows she should be terrified and sad right now, that she should be missing Sam and Cas and wishing she could have talked to them before dying, that she should be raging against the fact that Dean’s going to die next to her.

Mostly, though, she’s just calm. Very, very calm. Assuming she survives, the emotions will come later.

The creatures begins to beat on the door. Mary leans over and kisses Dean on the cheek as the door begins to crack.

“Go for the headshot,” she tells him. “Make every bullet count.” They’ve only got so much ammunition, after all.

Dean nods, looking at her as if he can’t decide whether to be soothed by her calmness or unnerved by it.

The door fractures further. The pile of furniture begins to scrape across the floor, pushed by the relentless press of bodies in the hall. “Okay, everybody,” Mary says. “Backs to the wall. Yell if you need cover to reload.”

Dean and Garth do as she requests, kicking bits of burnt wood out of the way as they go. Mary chooses a section of wall that puts Garth in between her and Dean. She knows she and Dean are good shots, but Garth’s still an unknown entity. Between them is the safest place for him.

The door crumbles as they reach the walls. An instant before the creatures pour in, Garth gives a shout of surprise and Mary feels the floor give way beneath her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The world dissolves into a flurry of debris and vertigo. Mary lands hard, choking on dust and ash, and rolls instinctively to one side, looking for a wall to put behind her. Her hand comes down on something soft - Garth.

Up above, Dean is screaming for her over the sound of growling. Mary coughs crap out of her lungs and shouts, “We’re fine! Dean, we’re fine! Keep shooting!”

She checks Garth over. He’s unconscious but breathing, and that’s about as much as Mary has time to discover before the circle of light above her is blocked by creatures.

They swarm down into the dim light of the basement, half going for her and Garth and the other half staying above to deal with Dean. Mary shoves Garth behind her as the world narrows down to target, target, target. She reloads automatically, keeping a steady count of each clip as it empties.

Second clip, from her back pocket. Third, from her jacket. Fourth, from her belt, and she’s down to her angel blade and anything she can spare a moment to get off of Garth. The sound of Dean’s gun is reassuringly steady up above, although there seems to be no end to the creatures and she knows it’s only a matter of time before they’re overwhelmed.

She grips her angel blade in her hand, calling up memories of her mother’s knife-fighting lessons and Cas’s more recent angel-fighting techniques. There will be more blood spatter this way and it will have to be closer combat, but there’s nothing for it.

The lead creature takes a step towards her and then halts, confused, as the pressure in the basement suddenly seems to _pulse_. Mary staggers, off-balance, and when she’s regained her footing it’s to discover that she’s got company.

“ _Cain?”_

He doesn’t turn to look at her. He just repeats that weird shrugging motion he’d used before to produce the Blade, and sets to work.

It’s mesmerising. She remembers being surprised by Cas’s ability to scythe his way through opposing angels when they’d escaped from Malachi. She’d been impressed by the speed and accuracy of every move he’d made, the way he’d seemed to have the whole fight mapped out in his head. Tactics, of course.

Next to Cain, Cas is a rank amateur. His fighting style is both a terrible and a beautiful thing to watch, almost dancelike in its brutal efficiency. Before Mary’s brain can entirely catch up with what she’s seeing, the last creature in the basement falls still. She can still hear Dean’s gun from upstairs, and for the first time she feels like they might get out of here alive. She has no idea why Cain’s here, but she can’t deny she’s grateful.

He turns and grabs her arm, faster than she can pull away, and the next thing she knows she’s standing outside the town, next to Dean’s car.

“What -”

“Are you harmed?” Cain asks, studying her carefully. 

“No, but -” she stops, glancing around. “Where are Dean and Garth?”

“They’re not my concern,” he says, letting go of her. “You’re certain you weren’t harmed?”

“What do you -” Mary stops, reconsidering her question. “And I am your concern?”

He tilts his head, still looking at her with that unnerving intensity. Being near him is just as unsettling as it had been the first time she’d met him. “Of course. You’re the Dust Collector. The Burning One.”

She files that away for future reference, but there are more pressing matters at hand.

“Okay. Then I’m going back to rescue Dean and Garth.”

He rears back, startled, but she’s already sprinting for the fallen tree. There’s that sense of _pressure_ again and he appears between her and the trench. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Not for you, apparently,” Mary says pointedly. “And I don’t care about the danger. Dean’s my son. Nothing will keep me from trying to help him, not even you.”

Cain stares her down for a moment. Mary forces herself to keep staring back even as a running tally in the back of her head counts down how many bullets Dean has left and how long Garth can possibly remain unnoticed in the basement.

“Fine,” Cain says finally, and vanishes. A moment later he reappears with Dean and a woozy but conscious Garth.

“We’ll also need to get the research materials out of the basement,” Mary says coolly.

Cain scowls but vanishes again, returning with an armful of sooty paper and water-damaged books which he dumps unceremoniously into her arms. A silver pendant swings out from the collar of his shirt as he moves. It’s only visible for an instant, and then he’s vanished before she can wring anything else out of him.

“Who was that masked man?” Garth slurs, listing to one side.

Dean shoves his gun into his waistband and hurries over to her, running his hands over her arms and checking her for injuries. “Are you all right? Did any of them get you?”

“No. I’m fine, Dean.”

He doesn’t seem to hear her, continuing to look her over. “Dean, really. I’m okay.”

“Okay. Okay.” He steps back. “We need to get out of here. We need to find Sammy and Cas.”

Mary blinks. “Sure, we can do that. Dean, kiddo, you look a little frazzled -”

Dean hauls Garth’s arm over his shoulders and grabs her shirt with his free hand, towing her back towards the cars. “Come on. We have to get back to the bunker.”

“We can’t just leave this place, someone else will come -” Mary protests. As happy as she is that Dean wants to return to the others, this town is still a trap, and a functioning one at that.

Dean doesn’t answer. He yanks the back door of the Impala open and bundles Garth inside, ignoring his weak “Wait, my stuff -”

“Dean,” Mary says. “Sweetheart, we have a moment to breathe here, we really need to -”

“Just get in the _fucking car,_ Mom!” Dean shouts.

Wide eyed, Mary complies. Whatever’s going on in Dean’s head, it’s got a pretty good grip on him, and at least he’s heading somewhere she wants him to go. Even so, she reaches out and grabs his hand as he goes for the keys, the research materials tumbling into her lap and leaving sooty smears behind on her shirt.

“Wait. Blow up the tree first.”

“Mom -”

“Blow. Up. The tree,” Mary repeats. At least that will keep the town contained. It’s the least they can do.

Dean makes an inarticulate noise of frustration and leaves, slamming the door behind him. “Stay in the car!” He yells as he sprints back towards the tree with a duffel bag from the trunk in one hand.

Mary takes a deep breath and lets it out. “You okay, Garth?”

“Headache,” Garth says. “I’m more worried about Dean. He seems kinda tense.”

Despite herself, Mary snickers.

She resettles the research in her lap, resigning herself to smoky clothes until she can find somewhere to do laundry, and pulls out her phone, checking to see if there’s service now that they’re out of the trap.

There is. She also has about a million text messages and missed calls from Cas.

_Dean prayed to me do you need assistance_

Ah. That explains it. She keeps reading.

_Mary do you need help_

_Answer me_

_I cannot find you you have to tell me where you are_

_I need you to tell me where you are_

_Tell me where you are_

_Do you need help_

_MARY ANSWER ME_

_WHERE ARE YOU_

_ARE YOU ALL RIGHT_

_ANSWER ME_

_MARY_

_MARY_

_PLEASE_

Eyes wide, Mary nearly fumbles the phone trying to call him back. He picks up before the phone has even finished with its first ring. “Mary? _Where are you?”_

“We’re fine, Cas!” She says quickly. “We’re fine. We were in trouble but we’re fine now, okay? We’re safe.”

Cas exhales shakily. “Good. I am glad to hear it. Do you need our assistance?”

In the distance, Mary hears an explosion as the tree goes up. A moment later she sees Dean heading back to the car at a dead run.

“No,” she says. “Actually, we’re coming to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know that this started in the fall of 2013 and that technically if you add up the days mentioned in the story it doesn’t get anywhere near to having lasted long enough for it to now be 2014, not to mention the fact that I totally ignored Christmas and New Year’s and, you know, the season of winter. My excuse is that the show does it too, so unexpected timeline shifts are totally canon! It’s an homage! Really, I’m just being artistic.
> 
> Also, fair warning, I went back and edited Chapter 6 a bit. The plot points are all the same, it’s just that the writing no longer makes me want to set myself on fire.
> 
> Also also, when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan during WWII there were indeed shadows of people and objects left behind on remaining walls after the flash of the blast. You can google it if you like, but be prepared for some very upsetting results. Medical examiners using Vick’s to block gross smells is a true thing, too. I know because of reasons.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: None that I noticed.  
> SPOILERS: 5x04 ‘The End’ again, oblique ones for 8x20 ‘Pac-Man Fever’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: The scientific name for Queen Anne’s lace, scientific theories about the nature of time  
> NEW TAGS: Charlie Bradbury, Dorothy Baum  
> NOTES: NOBODY PANIC but I think I just managed to update within a week of the last chapter (!!). I guess this is what happens when I don’t try to write plot-heavy twelve thousand word installments all in one go. :)

After the first hour, Mary realises that Dean fully intends to drive all the way to the bunker without talking. After two hours, she tries asking him a few questions, but he responds with single-word answers or not at all.

After three hours, she’s had enough. This afternoon alone she’s been chased by zombie creatures, saved by a demon, and dropped through a floor. What she really wants is comprehensive explanations from all parties involved and either a mountain of ice packs or the world’s longest hot shower, but she’ll settle for a chance to stretch her legs. From the increasingly miserable expression on Garth’s face, he’s in similar shape.

“Dean, kiddo, we need to pull over. Find a gas station or something.”

“We don’t need gas.”

“No,” Mary says patiently, “But three hours ago Garth and I fell into a basement and if we don’t get a chance to move around a bit we’re going to be completely seized up by the time we get to Lebanon.”

Dean’s jaw tightens, but a few minutes later he jerks the wheel and pulls into a gas station, impatience in every line of his body.

“Come on, Garth,” Mary says, as calmly as if everything is fine. “Let’s get some juice or something, okay?”

Garth glances between them, clearly torn between wanting to stretch and not wanting to exacerbate Dean’s mood, and then says “Okay,” and gets creakily out of the car. Mary follows suit, wishing for Cas’s healing abilities and trying to convince her body that joints really are supposed to be able to move.

Dean lasts about fifteen seconds before getting out of the car to follow them as they limp towards the gas station’s convenience store, eyeing their surroundings with extreme distrust. He settles inside the door where the sight lines are best, leaning slightly to one side in a way that looks casual unless you know it means he can reach his gun more easily.

Mary guides Garth to the refrigerators along the back wall. “I’m sorry Dean made you leave your stuff behind,” she says quietly when she’s sure they’re out of Dean’s earshot. She wants to apologise for more - sorry you were attacked by zombies, sorry Dean kind of kidnapped you - but she hasn’t even decided for herself what to think about all of those things. Garth’s possessions seem like the safest option.

Garth shrugs. “People are more important than stuff. Sam and Dean are my friends.”

Mary smiles at his earnest response. “I’m glad they have a friend like you.” She is, too. She’s been glad for every friend of theirs that she’s met. There don’t seem to be very many of them, which makes them all the more precious.

They make their choices and go back to the counter. Dean pays, tossing in a handful of chemical handwarmers as well. “Not as good as a heating pad, but I guess they’ll help,” he says gruffly.

Mary rubs his back, touched by his thoughtfulness. “Good thinking, sweetheart. Thank you.”

The tension doesn’t leave Dean’s shoulders at all, unfortunately, and he remains silent as they go back to the car and pull out onto the highway. 

As they drive, Mary begins to worry about their arrival. She’s been so fixated on what’s just happened - Cain, the monsters, whatever’s going on in Dean’s head - that it hadn’t been until Garth mentioned Sam in the store that it even occurred to her to start worrying about how Dean and Sam would react to seeing each other again. The encounter would be dicey enough just given the way they’d parted, but as it is it looks like she and Dean and Garth will be arriving late at night and in a high state of… whatever they are. Combined injury and the flight half of fight-or-flight, perhaps.

The best thing would be to engineer a way to get some time alone to call Sam and talk it through with him, make sure he’s prepared. But it’s not a conversation she wants to have in front of Dean, and it was hard enough to get him to stop for the five minutes at the gas station. He’s definitely not going to be able to bear anything longer.

The next best would be to warn Cas and hope he can prepare Sam himself, but she’s not sure she can text him subtly enough to avoid upping Dean’s tension levels. He already twitches every time one of them moves, as if he’s consciously resisting the urge to turn and check on them each time. And she’s not really sure how she’d fit the situation into such a short message, anyway.

She knows that Cas can hear prayers, though. She’s just not entirely clear on how it works. Does it have to be out loud, or can she pray in her head? How do you even start - ‘Our Castiel, who art in bunker’? How do you be sure you’re talking to the right angel and the prayer isn’t being intercepted somehow?

Eventually, she goes with _I pray to the angel Castiel, text me if you can hear this, please,_ and has just enough time to worry that maybe she should have identified herself when her phone vibrates against her hip. 

_I pray to the angel Castiel,_ she thinks again. _I want to give you a heads-up - we’ll be getting in in a few hours and Dean’s kind of in a state. I don’t know if ‘Croatoan’ means anything to you, but it has Dean in a complete panic. Please warn Sam what to expect. Oh, and if one of you can figure out how to have Blue Earth quarantined or maybe nuked from orbit I think it’ll be necessary._

There’s another moment while Cas digests this, and then her phone vibrates again. She eases it out of her pocket and glances down, noticing Dean’s hands tightening on the steering wheel out of the corner of her eye.

_I will do these things_

Good. That’s one worry off her mind... at least temporarily, anyway.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By the time the car pulls to a stop Mary’s managed to doze off against the window of the car, the chemical handwarmers long gone lukewarm against her back. Dean bolts from the driver’s seat before her half-asleep mind has quite caught up to events, and it takes a moment after she’s stumbled blearily to her feet and turned to look after Garth before she realises they’re not out in front of the bunker as she’d expected. Instead, they’re in some kind of underground garage filled with cars from the 1950s or before. Dean’s already vanished through a door at one end, bellowing for Cas and Sam.

Mary decides to come back for Garth later - he’s asleep anyway, and she wishes _she’d_ been able to keep napping - and heads off, using Dean’s voice to guide her up to the library she remembers from before. She’s definitely glad she’d warned Cas about the likely nature of their arrival, because he and Sam are both awake and waiting for them and not looking at Dean like he’s a crazy person.

Well, not too much, anyway, but Mary figures she has to allow Sam some leeway. Not only does he have some issues with Dean right now, he’s also Dean’s younger brother and practically contractually obligated to look at Dean like he’s lost it from time to time.

“- banish me as well,” Cas is saying as she enters. He senses her arrival before Sam does and turns to smile at her, but Sam’s legs are longer and he beats Cas around the table to sweep Mary up in a hug.

Mary stands on her tiptoes and cradles Sam close, running her hand through his (absurdly long but starting to grow on her) hair, hiding her tears in his shoulder. “Hi, baby. How are you feeling?”

“Hi Mom,” Sam says, his voice muffled as well. “I’m fine, Cas did a good job. Are you guys okay?”

“Nothing a hot shower can’t fix,” Mary says, reluctantly giving in to gravity and settling back down on her heels. He lets her go but does it slowly, and she’s so glad he isn’t angry at her for their disastrous conversation about Gadreel that she nearly tears up again.

Cas is watching her a little uncertainly from the corner of the table, and when she turns to him and holds out her arms she sees his shoulders loosen a little with relief. He leans into her without hugging her back, and it’s such a Cas thing to do that she has to squeeze him a little tighter and kiss the side of his head. The warm rush of his healing abilities getting rid of her bruises is welcome, too.

Sam clears his throat pointedly. Cas says “Oh! Right,” and pats her precisely three times on the back.

“All right, great,” Dean says impatiently, drumming his fingers on the table. “Everybody’s said hi. Cas, there’s got to be some way to write you into the sigils so it banishes every angel _except_ you.”

Cas turns dutifully back to the table, and Mary retreats to stand next to Sam again. He loops one arm around her shoulder and she leans into his side. 

“You taught him to hug?” she asks in an undertone.

“ _You_ taught him to forehead kiss,” Sam points out.

Mary grins. She’s sad that she missed Sam making that particular discovery, although it occurs to her that she should possibly take Cas aside for a discreet and gentle talk about different forms of physical affection at some point.

“ _Probably,”_ Cas is saying at the table. “It will _probably_ work. It shouldn’t banish me, but it may not work against other angels and unfortunately we won’t know for sure until it’s tested.”

Dean scowls. “Well, I guess it’s all we’ve got. Draw it out for me.”

“Sam, do you know why 2014 is significant?” Mary asks quietly. They’re standing just far enough away and Dean is intent enough on Cas’s work that she should be able to question Sam a little bit without being overheard. Given how intense Dean’s behavior has been since Blue Earth, it’s likely to be the most private moment she’s able to grab.

Sam frowns. “No. Why? Is that why he’s so worked up?”

Mary shrugs. “I’m not really sure. It was definitely the combination of the Croatoan virus and the date that threw him so badly, but he couldn’t really explain it to me.” She frowns as something occurs to her. “Sam, he and Cas told me that he’d travelled back in time once. Has he ever gone forward?”

“Not that I know of,” Sam says thoughtfully, “But Cas might know more. We’ve… travelled separately sometimes. Maybe something happened then.”

At the table, Cas finishes drawing the symbol and pushes it over to Dean for inspection. 

“How many times does it have to go up?” Dean asks.

“Just once, actually, and it doesn’t need to be in blood” Cas says, “But it has to be over the most commonly-used entrance. It’s more symbolic than -”

Dean grabs a marker out of the cup in the center of the table and takes off for the main entrance at a jog. They trail after him, coming to a stop in the middle of the atrium under the balcony.

“I would have drawn it,” Cas says, sounding a little offended.

“Sometimes it makes you feel better to do it yourself,” Mary says. No matter how many times John had locked up every night, she’d always had to go around and check for herself. There are some things you just don’t trust unless you’ve physically done them, and this is one of them. It must be especially true for Dean right now.

Dean reaches the door and begins drawing out the symbol, the paper held flat against the wall for reference.

“Cas,” Sam says quickly, seizing the opportunity while Dean’s out of earshot, “do you know anything about Dean travelling to the - hey, are you okay?”

Mary turns to look, and immediately grabs Cas’s elbow in alarm. He’s gone ghostly pale, face screwed up in pain, and she can feel him trembling. “Is it the sigil?”

“It can’t be, it’s not done yet,” Sam says. Cas lets out a small, choked noise and crumples to his knees, free hand pressed against his chest. Mary goes with him, wrapping one arm hurriedly around his waist and managing to slow their descent enough to avoid injury. They wind up unbalanced but safely on the floor, Cas curled towards her as if physical proximity will leach away some of the pain.

“Something must be attacking him,” Sam says, hovering anxiously. “Dean! Draw faster!”

Cas shakes his head, “Borrowed Grace,” he gasps between tremors, and then has to clamp his mouth shut to avoid screaming as the pain ratchets up. 

It takes Mary a moment to get it, and when she understands she goes cold. “Dean, stop drawing! Wipe out the sigil!”

Up on the balcony, Dean shouts in frustration. “Which is it? Keep going or wipe it out?!”

“He took another angel’s Grace! The sigil’s ripping it right out of him!” Mary shouts. Cas is writhing now, eyes tightly shut and spine arched in agony, and it’s all Mary can do to keep a hold of him. A lightbulb overhead explodes and in the distance Mary hears something else shatter. Sam crouches down to help, and the sensation of being grabbed by a new person makes Cas open his eyes. 

White light floods out. Sam clamps his hand over Cas’s face, but wisps of light still leak through his fingers. “ _Shit._ She’s right, Dean - ruin the sigil!”

Mary’s eyes are fixed on Cas so she doesn’t see Dean scribbling frantically through the symbol, but she knows the exact moment that he obscures it enough to make it inert. Cas goes limp, gasping in air, and Sam’s hand goes dark. He removes it gingerly, and Mary’s relieved to see Cas’s normal blue eyes looking dazedly back at them.

“That was unpleasant,” he rasps.

Dean clatters down the stairs behind them, elbowing Sam out of the way and falling to his knees next to Cas. Sam lands on his butt with an _oof_ , looking startled and annoyed, but Dean is completely focused on his friend and doesn’t notice.

“Cas? Cas, are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Cas says, his voice a little less rough this time.

Dean exhales with relief and helps Cas sit up and lean back against the solid side of the map table. “You’re sure? It didn’t do any damage?”

Cas shakes his head. “It will pass. Don’t worry.”

Dean leans back a little, but keeps one hand on Cas’s shoulder. His grip is tight enough that his fingertips are going white - on a human, it would probably be painful. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.”

“I know, Dean,” Cas says, watching him worriedly. “It’s all right.” He pats Dean awkwardly on the arm, glancing at Mary.

Sam, still sitting on Dean’s other side, looks just as unnerved. He scowls. “Dean, I think it’s time you tell us what’s going on.”

Dean’s jaw tightens. Mary reaches out and puts her hand on his free one, trying to give him comfort or strength or whatever it is he most needs. She doesn’t have that much experience with Dean as an adult, but even she can tell that this display of overt concern is unlike him.

“What happened in 2014, sweetheart?”

Dean lets go of Cas’s shoulder, pulling in on himself. He doesn’t try to move Mary’s hand but he looks like he’s bracing himself - whether it’s for giving his explanation or for the reactions of the rest of them once they hear it, Mary isn’t sure. 

“Cas, you remember that time Zachariah found me and you had to pull me out of the hotel room?”

Cas nods. “I remember. You said I had good timing and told me to never change.”

Dean flinches minutely. “Well, right before you got there he’d just gotten me back from the future. He sent me to 2014 to see what would happen if Sam and I said no to being possessed by Michael and Lucifer.”

“And you saw the Croatoan virus?” Mary guesses. She’s heard bits and pieces of this time in her sons’ lives, but she hardly knows the whole story. She already feels a little lost.

Dean rubs his forehead. “Yeah. It had spread to pretty much everywhere, there were just a couple of camps left where humans could hole up. Me and Cas - I mean, future us - were in one of those, and we were…”

“Not ourselves?” Cas suggests when it seems like Dean isn’t going to keep talking. 

Dean laughs hollowly. “Yeah. You were this, this drugged-up shell, you were just - I was there for two days and I don’t think I saw you sober once. You were on _everything._ All the angels had left and you were human and you just, I guess you just couldn’t cope. And me - God, I was hard and bitter and totally willing to kill anyone. The first time I saw myself I executed some normal guy because I thought he might have been infected with the virus. And then - at the end I was totally willing to send all of you off to die just as a diversion so I could get to Sam. You too, Cas. And you _went_. You knew exactly what I was up to and you just _went._ You didn’t care any more and I didn’t either.”

Mary swallows hard. It explains a lot, actually - Dean’s overreaction to Mary giving Cas painkillers for his arm, his total freeze-up when he realised how many elements of that future were in play now, the way he’d thrown everything aside to make sure Sam and Cas were safe and protected. She can’t believe he’s been carrying this by himself this whole time. 

“And me?” Sam says quietly. His expression is set, remote - Mary can’t tell if he’s horrified or angry or if he even believes what Dean is saying.

Dean shakes his head, staring at the floor. “There was no you there. It was just Lucifer. You were completely gone. You broke my neck and you smiled.”

His voice catches on the last word and Mary’s heart clenches. Dean must have been truly out of options if he’d agreed to letting an angel possess his brother after everything else he’d seen. He must have felt sick every time he looked at Sam and saw something else looking back.

“Dean,” Cas says, softly but firmly, “Zachariah’s specialty was creating illusions. He showed you what would most horrify you into compliance. It doesn’t mean -”

“Yeah?” Dean says, finally looking up. “‘Cause from where I’m sitting we’ve got the angels out of Heaven, you brought down to - to whatever you are now, the Croatoan virus out and about, and total anarchy in Hell. Lucifer’s only a matter of time.” He glances over at Sam and then quickly looks away. Sam’s mouth thins.

“Okay,” Mary says quickly before it can devolve into a fight. “Well, first of all, I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about Lucifer. Cas, does the phrase ‘The Dust Collector’ mean anything to you?”

Cas cocks his head, thinking. “It’s familiar,” he says slowly. “I think I’ve come across it before, but it must have been a very long time ago. Where did you hear it?”

“Cain mentioned it,” Mary says, “and I think Joshua started to when we ran into him in the Garden. Is it something associated with Lucifer?”

“No, it’s older than him,” Cas says pensively. “I wouldn’t say it’s enough to disprove our initial theory, though.”

“Okay, but to be fair our initial theory wasn’t exactly waterproof,” Mary points out. They should be glad that someone other than Lucifer is possibly in play, shouldn’t they? Lucifer’s got to be the worst-case scenario.

“So I guess you’ve been keeping some secrets too, huh,” Sam cuts in sourly.

Mary winces. She would have liked to ease the boys into this a little more gently, but given Dean’s handling of the Gadreel situation Sam probably would have been upset with her no matter how she told him. Not unjustifiably, she should add.

“It’s more that we didn’t have anything solid enough to count as actual news,” she says, which is both a truth and a total lie. They don’t have much to go on, but she has also been deliberately not telling her boys. “We’ve been speculating that the angels brought me back to act as a vessel and Cas said that tactically the best choice for an assault on Metatron and Heaven would be Lucifer, but we haven’t seen any real evidence to back it up.” She glances over at Dean. “The point is, I don’t think we can count Lucifer in yet, which puts a hole in your inevitable future.”

“It doesn’t disprove it, either,” Dean says. “And it’s not like he’d only have one vessel to choose from, now.”

“I’m not saying ‘yes’ to Lucifer!” Sam snaps. “If there’s anyone around here with a hard-on for saying yes to angels it’s you.”

“I dunno, Sammy, you sure seemed keen to end it all before,” Dean says bitingly. “Why _wouldn’t_ you take the easy -”

“Cas, can angels send someone forward in time?” Mary asks loudly, “I mean, is it even possible?” 

“It’s difficult to say with certainty,” Cas says, watching Sam and Dean warily. They’re glaring at each other and look ready to go off at a moment’s notice, but at least they’re stopping long enough to hear what Cas has to say. “The more pertinent question might be whether Zachariah would be more likely to attempt it or to simply create an illusory future that exactly served his purposes, and I think the second option is much more likely. Zachariah was a traditionalist - he truly believed that the Apocalypse was destined. I’m not sure it would even occur to him that a possible future could exist in which Sam and Dean hadn’t both accepted their roles.” He glances between them, looking for further signs of belligerence. “Speculation aside, the present we must deal with includes the Croatoan virus and wars on several fronts. I suggest we focus on what we know we have.”

“That’s a good point, Cas,” Mary says. Dean and Sam don’t seem to be paying much attention to it, though. Sam looks even angrier than he did when Cas started and Dean doesn’t look comforted in the slightest. “Boys? Were you listening?”

“I think I have a much more pertinent question for Dean,” Sam says. He fixes his brother with a hard look, and Mary braces herself. “Given that you watched your future self send Cas to die just to try to reach future me, _why the hell_ do you keep insisting that any price is okay as long as I’m alive at the end?” He stands up, shaking with anger. “You just told Cas that you wouldn’t have hurt him on purpose. But you would, wouldn’t you? You’d do exactly what your future self did if you thought it was necessary. Why the hell do you think that’s _okay?”_

“Sam, kiddo,” Mary interrupts, “I don’t think right now is the best time to -”

“No, it’s a great time,” Dean snaps, standing too. Mary scrambles to help Cas to his feet as well, wary that they might have to separate the two at any moment. “I think it’s a perfect time. You’ve probably been waiting to get this off your chest for a while, huh, Sammy? So come on, let me have it. Both barrels, let’s go. How else have I failed you? How else have I screwed up? But keep in mind that you’re only here to yell at me because of choices _I_ made. Dying’s easy, right, Sam? Dying’s simple. Try making some hard frigging decisions once in a while and _then_ get back to me once your world’s not quite so black and white.”

“Okay, both of you, that’s enough,” Mary says.

“Hard choices?” Sam says incredulously. “You want to come at me for _hard choices?_ Are you _serious?_ Do you even _remember_ -”

“Enough!” Mary shouts. Dean and Sam subside a little, glaring. “I said that’s _enough_. I’m all for airing out grievances and it’s high time the two of you started talking, but if all you’re going to do is tear into each other then it doesn’t help anyone, least of all you.” She waits for a moment, just to see if they’ll start yelling again, but they remain silent. “Okay. You’ve both got a lot of stuff you need to discuss but you need to do it _calmly_. Can you do that?”

“No, I don’t think I can,” Sam says tightly, and stomps off.

“I’m not promising anything,” Dean snarls, and heads in the other direction.

“Oh, good,” Mary says sarcastically to the suddenly much-emptier room. “I’m glad that went well.”

“It was a good effort,” Cas sighs. “Winchesters are stubborn.”

“Yes we are,” Mary scowls, firmly reminding herself that giving Dean and Sam a little time to cool down is better than dragging them both back in by their ears and forcing them to get along. Probably.

She takes a deep breath and resolutely focuses on something she can actually do. “How are you feeling, Cas?”

Cas shrugs and straightens. He seems to be moving more easily, which is good. “The pain is fading. By morning it should be back to normal levels.”

Mary frowns. “Normal levels?” That doesn’t sound good at all.

Cas looks guilty. “Ah. The borrowed Grace… doesn’t like me very much. There isn’t anything to be done so I wasn’t going to mention it.”

“Does it hurt more when you use it?” Mary asks, a nasty suspicion forming.

“It objects to being used,” Cas says evasively.

“So when you healed me…” Mary says, and Cas doesn’t have to answer. The look on his face says everything. Mary sighs. “Okay. Looks like all of us have to get better at communicating. Cas, those were minor injuries. I’d rather heal naturally than know you’re in pain.”

“I would also prefer to be in pain than to watch someone I care for suffer,” Cas says pointedly.

“Fair point.” Not one she likes very much, but a fair one. It would appear that all of them are prone to self-sacrifice, which is just terrific news. “Still - take it easy, okay? And let me know if it gets any worse. The Grace isn’t _sentient_ , is it?”

“Not exactly. It bears the imprint of its originator.”

“And he was not a nice man,” Mary remembers. He’d been a torturer, for crying out loud. “Seriously, Cas, don’t hang on to it just because you think it’ll help. If it’s hurting you, can’t you just go human again?”

“In theory.” He doesn’t look too happy about it. Not for the first time, Mary wishes that Cas didn’t see himself as useless without his powers. 

“Do you require rest?” Cas asks when she doesn’t say anything.

What she requires is a plan to stop the war between the angels, the one between the demons, and the one between her children, but a place to sleep will do in a pinch. She knows she should be going after Sam or Dean and trying to talk to them, or soothe them, or coax them into talking to each other without immediately going for each other’s vulnerable spots, but dear sweet Lord she’s so exhausted. And, frankly, starting to get a little annoyed. “Yes, thank you.”

Cas leads her downstairs to the room she’d slept in before, now outfitted with a nice yellow lamp and a colorful quilt on the bed. There’s even a lace doily spread out on the bedside table for decoration. 

“Sam and I went to a thrift store,” Cas explains. “I picked the lace. Sam said you weren’t a crazy cat lady grandma but I thought it was pretty.”

“It’s lovely, Cas,” Mary says, honestly touched. 

“If you look closely, it resembles the fractal pattern found in _Daucus carota.”_ He gives her a shy look. “It’s my favorite.”

“Then I like it even more,” Mary says firmly. 

Cas smiles, pleased, and Mary’s spirits recover just a fraction. Hey, at least she’s only totally failing with two of her three charges.

Once Cas has withdrawn, Mary sits on the edge of the bed and allows herself to flop over backwards. God, she’s tired. It’s been an eventful and upsetting day, but even so she can actually feel herself relaxing and becoming one with the bed and it’s like magic. If she doesn’t move soon she’s going to fall asleep like this without getting to enjoy the warm quilt and the - are those flannel sheets? Very nice.

She closes her eyes, allowing herself a moment of peace. The day has not been a total disaster - they are, at least, still alive - but it’s hardly been a success, either. For right now, though, just for this minute, she’s going to enjoy having a place to sleep and time in which to do the sleeping.

She musters enough energy to kick off her shoes and put her head on the pillow. Getting under the covers can wait. Getting her pajamas from the car can _definitely_ wait. She’s going to sleep and not -

She sits bolt upright.

“Dammit, I forgot about Garth!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_The blonde woman perches on the end of Mary’s bed, neat and doe-eyed and earnest. Mary groans and puts her hands over her face._

_“Not you again. Look, I told you the last time -”_

_“I know,” the woman says patiently, “and I know you require sleep. I’m sorry to visit you like this every time - I would do it in person if I could.”_

_Mary sighs. “So you’ve said.”_

_“Please, I need you to listen to me this time. You must see that the world grows darker by the day. If action is to be taken, it must be soon.”_

_Mary stares up at the ceiling. “It’s been a pretty damn dark day, I’ll give you that,” she says wearily._

_The woman frowns, concerned. “What has happened? Have you been harmed or placed in further da-”_

Mary wakes up all in a rush. By the time her brain has categorized a thump, a flare of yellow light, and a crash, her body has already grabbed her pistol from under her pillow and gotten her upright. To her right, Cas is already at the ready with his angel blade.

The closet door is standing open and is flooded with sunlight, silhouetting two women - one upright and one having clearly just tripped over the trash can. Instead of the closet’s single bare bulb providing the illumination, though, the door now opens into a countryside in full daylight.

The standing woman pulls a gun of her own, and the other says “Oh geez, _crap_ , that’s like the worst entrance ever, I’m so sorry! Hey, who knew Oz jetlag was a thing, right? Um. Nobody shoot?”

‘Oz’? Mary squints. That countryside does look awfully familiar. And that path does look a lot like a yellow brick road. Hadn’t Dean said something about Oz the last time she was here?

“I’m Charlie?” The kneeling woman says tentatively. “Uh, you do know Sam and Dean, right? We couldn’t have gone _that_ far off target…”

“Oh,” Mary says, lowering her gun a little. “Yeah, they’ve mentioned a Charlie.” In fact, Charlie’s the one she borrowed the ‘meh’ shirt from. She winces a little - she’d been wearing that shirt during the zombie fight, and it’s now very thoroughly ruined.

Cas narrows his eyes, not relaxing his stance an inch. “And your companion?”

“Dorothy,” the other woman drawls. “She’s the brains, I’m the muscle. Hiya.”

Mary’s prevented from commenting on this by the belated and dramatic entrance of Dean, in his pajamas but very heavily armed. Sam appears an instant later from the opposite direction, but he relaxes immediately.

“By the way, I called Charlie,” Sam says blandly, as if he hadn’t arrived at a dead run a few seconds before.

Dean tosses a glare over his shoulder. “She was _safe_ in _Oz.”_

“We need all the help we can get, specifically with collecting information,” Sam says through gritted teeth.

Mary coughs pointedly, and the boys marshall enough self-control to turn away from the fight. 

“Hey, Charlie,” Dean says, pasting on a smile. “How was Oz?”

“Amazing!” Charlie beams, and then her expression shifts. “And also scary. But mostly amazing. Like, 88% amazing and only 12% sheer pants-wetting terror. Um, whose bedroom are we in?”

“Mine,” Mary says, putting her gun down on the bedside table in an attempt to look a little friendlier. “I’m Mary. It’s nice to meet you.”

Charlie glances at Sam and Dean. “Mary, like…”

“Mom,” they both say, and then both look furious about it.

“Back from the dead, don’t entirely understand why yet,” Mary recaps. “This is Cas.” There’s a clatter in the hallway, and Sam has to throw himself backwards to avoid being accidentally brained by a baseball bat. “And that’s Garth.”

“ _Garth?”_ Sam says, astonished. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“Canada,” Garth says, peering interestedly into the room. He spots the country currently residing in Mary’s closet and his eyes widen. “Whoa. Does mine have one of those?”

“Garth,” Sam repeats, as if he’s still not entirely sure Garth is real and not an elaborate joke.

Charlie takes the opportunity to sidle over to Mary and Cas. “Are they okay?” she asks, eyeing the boys.

“Philosophical difference,” Mary sighs. “Ongoing.”

Charlie nods slowly, eyebrow raised, and then apparently decides to let it go for the moment. “Oh. Well, I really am sorry about barging into your room like this.”

Mary smiles. Charlie seems like a sweetheart, awkward entrance or not. “It’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” Charlie says, beaming. “It’s just, it’s good to meet you, Mrs. Winchester. I’m really, really glad you’re back.”

“Mary’s fine,” Mary says. “Also, fair warning - I borrowed one of the shirts you left behind and it got destroyed in a fight. I’m really sorry. I know I didn’t ask permission.”

Charlie blinks. “Which one was it?”

“It said… ‘meh’ on it?”

“Oh.” Charlie shrugs. “Meh.” And that seems to be that. She drops the subject and turns towards Cas. “And you, wow, I’ve heard so much about you, Cas! Dean just doesn’t shut up.”

“Is that… good?” Cas asks warily.

“Batman voice,” Charlie says dreamily. “ _Awesome._ Cas, say ‘I am the night’!”

“I’m not the night,” Cas says, frowning.

“ _Yes,”_ Charlie says, grinning. Behind her, Dorothy catches Mary’s eye and shrugs with a lopsided smile, as if to say _What can you do?_

By the door, Sam has finished questioning Garth and is not-so-subtly trying to find a way to stand in the doorway without getting too close to his brother. For his part, Dean is trapped in the room unless he wants to go by Sam, and is looking increasingly annoyed by it.

“Okay!” Mary says loudly. “Well, it’s nice that everybody’s gotten a chance to say hi - Charlie and Dorothy, lovely to meet you - but it’s the ass end of midnight and everybody should really be in bed right now. Charlie, Dorothy, do you have rooms already?”

“I can sort you out,” Dean says. “I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“Thank you, Dean.” She shouldn’t be surprised that Dean isn’t keen on going to sleep, but she’s his mother and she reserves the right to be worried about it. “Good night, everybody. We can catch up more in the morning.”

They troop out obediently. Dorothy stops to shut the closet door as she goes, and Mary’s relieved to see the line of sunlight around the jamb wink out. Just before she gets into the hallway, Charlie turns back abruptly.

“Sorry, this is - this is just something I have to do,” she says, and hugs Mary.

Mary hugs her back automatically, surprised but a little touched. “Sleep well, Charlie. You too, Dorothy.”

“Thanks,” Charlie says. She looks a little bit teary-eyed, and Mary resolves to ask Sam or Dean about it in the morning.

“Come on, Red,” Dorothy says, ushering Charlie out into the hall.

Finally, only Mary and Cas are left. 

“Cas,” Mary says wearily, “why were you in my room?”

“I’m watching over you,” Cas says, as if he’s surprised it’s even a question.

Granted, she probably should have been able to guess that one. It’s not the first time he’s done it, and she’s even done it to him in return. “Next time just let me know beforehand, all right?”

Cas nods gravely. “Of course. I will watch over you tonight.”

“Thanks,” Mary says dryly, already climbing into bed.

Cas solicitously turns off the lamp for her and settles back into his corner.

“Hey, Cas?” Mary says into the darkness. “With all the warding and stuff we’ve got up, is it possible for angels to still communicate with one of us if they want to?”

“Yes, through dreams,” Cas says. “Why do you ask?”

Mary frowns. “No reason, really. See you in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess this is a good time to ask - do people prefer longer, less frequent chapters or shorter, faster ones? Now that I’m not trying to keep up with the show I’ll have a lot more leeway.  
> On that note, BOY HOWDY is it more fun to write when I’m not trying to keep to canon! :D


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: No gore, but there are a few crime scene photos under discussion. Also, following the trail blazed by the show, in this chapter I have taken a number of different religious traditions, mashed them up, stirred them in a pot with a generous helping of fiction, and then used them for my own purposes. You have been warned.  
> SPOILERS: minor for 8x06 ‘Southern Comfort’, 3x11 ‘Mystery Spot’, and Sam’s arc in Season 4  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: pancake varieties, 1930s slang  
> NEW TAGS: Muriel  
> NOTES: Into this chapter I put all the feels. Okay, most of the feels. Okay, like 40% of the feels.

Mary wakes up late the next morning and indulges in a long, hot shower, feeling defiant and a little guilty about it. She’s kind of afraid to find out what Sam and Dean have done to each other in her absence - and even more afraid that nothing has changed at all - but even being caught between that seesaw of worry and avoidance can’t ruin the pleasure of some truly spectacular water pressure.

When she gets upstairs, she finds that she’s not the only one who slept late. Garth and Dorothy are nowhere to be seen and neither is Dean, although a faint and steady _pop pop pop_ sound makes her think that the bunker probably has a range somewhere. Even the best soundproofing only does so much, and Mary’s no stranger to the soothing rhythm of target practice in the face of emotional turmoil.

Sam and Cas are sitting at the table in the library, surrounded by books, and a quiet but loving murmur of “Oh, sweet internet, I’ve missed you so,” from the direction of the map table in the atrium clues Mary in to Charlie’s location.

Cas looks up as she enters and immediately pushes his research aside. “I will help you make breakfast.”

Over Cas’s shoulder, Sam gives her an alarmed look and a frantic headshake. Mary smiles reassuringly at him and says, “Thanks, Cas.” She’d been planning on sitting down for a little bit first, maybe talk to Sam some, but the idea of coffee is an attractive one and she does like to cook. She’s not sure when Cas turned into a chef, but from Sam’s spooked expression it was probably during his convalescence.

As soon as they get to the kitchen, though, the real reason for Cas’s culinary aspirations becomes clear. 

“You were arguing in your sleep last night.”

Mary spots a coffee maker on the counter and heads for it, silently blessing whoever thought to start a pot going. “Yeah, I do that sometimes.”

Cas fixes her with a stern look. “You also asked me if angels could appear in dreams. What did you dream about last night?”

Mary frowns at him over the edge of her coffee cup. “I don’t know, Cas. People usually can’t remember their dreams in the morning.”

Cas gives a sigh that somehow encompasses the whole of human existence and its accompanying stupidity. “Mary, I think someone - Muriel or one of her emissaries - may be contacting you in your dreams to persuade you to consent to being a vessel. The less aware you are, the more likely they’ll be able to manipulate you into saying yes, which is why you don’t remember anything when you wake up. It’s unfortunately not an uncommon tactic.” He scowls disapprovingly, and Mary wonders for the first time how he’d acquired his own vessel and who the man had been. She feels a little guilty for never really considering it before.

“Creepy,” she says instead. “So, what do we do about it? More warding?”

“Actually, no,” Cas says thoughtfully. “Muriel is the player in this game that we understand the least. This is an opportunity for you to question her and find some answers.”

“Answers that I won’t remember in the morning,” Mary points out. She hates to be a killjoy, but so it goes.

“Angelic names have power. Call her by name in the next dream.”

Well, Cas is the expert. “All right.” A disturbing thought strikes her and she has to put her coffee down to avoid spilling. “She can’t read my mind or anything while she’s in there, can she?”

“Oh, no,” Cas says. “If she forced her way through the warding it would alert your conscious mind to her presence and would also cause significant damage to you mentally. She needs you to be intact enough to consent or her plan won’t work.”

“...Great,” Mary says faintly. “Uh. Okay. So, breakfast? Let’s make some breakfast. And stop talking about this, ideally.”

“Yes, of course,” Cas says, squaring his shoulders in a way that suggests a battle is imminent. “I no longer taste food the way humans do, but while Sam was recovering I discovered that I could listen to the resonance of the molecules and pair foods in that manner.”

That certainly explains Sam’s look of terror. “Want me to teach you how to make pancakes?”

“Oh,” Cas says, relaxing slightly. “Yes. That would be ideal.”

Charlie comes in a few minutes later as Mary is explaining the difference between pancakes, hotcakes, and johnnycakes. Cas is listening intently, absorbing this information in much the same way as he absorbs anything, so it’s understandable that Charlie takes one look at their Very Serious Business faces and says “Oh thank God, I was hoping that someone would make a Sam and Dean plan. Can I help?”

That’s actually next on the list of things to tackle, but there’s no time like the present. “Good morning, Charlie. Do you have any suggestions?”

“I don’t even know what’s going _on,”_ Charlie says plaintively. “Dean won’t talk to me and Sam comes down with a serious case of Bitchface when I try to ask. I knew Dean was keeping secrets when I left for Oz, but he never told me what was happening.”

Mary glances over at Cas, who nods minutely. “Okay: short version,” she says. “Sam nearly died, Dean tricked him into agreeing to be an angelic vessel so he could be healed, and the angel turned out to be a bad guy. Sam’s angry that Dean agreed to the possession and then lied to him about it, and Dean’s angry that Sam would have rather died to save the world.”

“Wow,” Charlie says, wide-eyed. “Okay. Wow. That… is just the biggest mess ever, in so many new and interesting ways.”

“Pretty much,” Mary sighs, taking out her frustration on the pancake batter.

“Do you have a plan?”

Mary scowls at the griddle on the stove. “I don’t know what to do besides talk to them and try to get them to talk to each other. Preferably without physical violence.”

“Cas?”

Cas shifts uncomfortably. “Human emotion is not my area of expertise, but I agree that conversation is preferable to bodily harm. Sam and Dean are both too accustomed to shrugging off physical injury. I think words will make more of an impact.”

“We just have to get them to use them,” Charlie groans. “Well, I told Sam I would help dig up information on the angel and demon battles. Dean’s more of a strategist than Sam is, so I might be able to get him to talk to me a little if I slip it in under the radar.”

Mary nods. “Sam looks pretty settled in with his research, I’ll see if I can do anything with that.” Research isn’t her favorite part of hunting, but she’s not terrible at it and it’ll at least be useful even if Sam refuses to open up.

“I would ordinarily be called upon to help with both strategy and research,” Cas says. “I can travel between the two.”

“Actually, it would probably help if we switched it up on them as much as possible,” Mary says thoughtfully, digging through the cabinets for something to grease up the griddle. “We’d each get a more rounded view, and they wouldn’t be hearing from just one person.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie says. “I can make up a reason to help Sam with his end, too, so I can go back and forth.”

Mary nods. “Okay, good. Any suggestions on how to approach them?”

“Dean tends towards anger and self-blame,” Cas says immediately. “He is very skilled at using his anger and the anger of others in an offensive capacity. The best route might be through his guilt.”

Mary winces, but accepts this. “And Sam?”

“Sam is much more logical,” Cas says, and runs dry.

“He has a lot of empathy, too, though,” Charlie says slowly. “It just isn’t always his first response. It sounds like right now he’s basically reduced this to a cost/benefit analysis. With a side order of pretty justified hurt, I should add.”

“So we need to trigger his emotions,” Mary says. “That’s a place to start, anyway.”

Charlie leans back, satisfied. “Yay, go Team Emotionally Aware! I just have one question.”

“Shoot,” Mary says, pouring out the first round of batter.

“Do you know how to make shape pancakes?” Charlie asks hopefully.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary does know how to make shape pancakes. Cas, when he tries to help, proves to be completely inept at them, then borderline lethal with the eggs, then a previously undiscovered _genius_ when it comes to cooking a perfect slice of bacon. By the time they emerge from the kitchen with all of the breakfast items, the bunker has filled with the smell of food and Dean, Garth, and Dorothy have all emerged to take advantage of it. Sam’s look of relief when he sees the normal nature of what’s on offer is downright comical.

Charlie immediately heads to Dean and the map table with Dorothy in tow. Mary settles across the table from Sam and Garth, and after a moment of dithering Cas joins them, starting in on Pastor Jim’s library in lieu of eating. The rest of them get started with breakfast, either eating or eating-with-books as the mood strikes them.

Mary allows a few minutes to pass, enough that Sam’s mostly cleaned his plate and Garth has become so absorbed in his reading that his last forkful of pancake is hovering unnoticed in one hand, and then says as casually as possible “Hey, Sam, I’ve been thinking about something you said earlier.”

“Yeah?” Sam says, barely glancing up from the last of his eggs.

“It was before we found out about the angel battle,” Mary says, watching Sam carefully. “You said something about the awful things that had happened because of family and I was just, I wasn’t sure what you meant. I’m sorry if it’s a sensitive subject, sweetheart. I‘m just trying to catch up a little.”

Sam sighs and pushes his plate away. “A lot of it is stuff we’re not very proud of, Mom.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Mary says quickly, and even though she’s dying to know every detail she can get her hands on she does mean it. God knows she’s done plenty of things she would never, ever want to have to tell her own parents about.

Sam leans back in his chair, glancing over at Garth to make sure he’s still engrossed in his reading. “Well, it’s not like you don’t have a right to know. I guess what I was mostly getting at when I said that is that we have this, this inability to let go, Dean and me, and it’s led to a lot of bad stuff and made us easy to manipulate. Dean’s worse about it than I am, but I’m not exactly blameless either.”

Mary nods and lets the silence build. She’s kind of flying blind here, but she’s hoping that hearing Sam recount the whole story will give her an idea of where to direct his empathy.

After a moment Sam shifts uncomfortably and says “I mean, just look at the big items. I died and Dean sold his soul to bring me back, which led to him breaking the first seal on Lucifer’s cage. I couldn’t cope with him being gone and that set me directly on the path to breaking the last seal and starting the damn _Apocalypse,_ Mom. And that’s not even getting in to how many people have been hurt along the way because of this. The collateral damage has been insane. I mean, look at Cas - he’s been killed like three times, he’s been depowered and tortured and driven insane and sent to Purgatory, and some of that he might have brought on himself but none of it would have happened if we hadn’t gotten to him first. Cas, you can’t possibly think your life has gotten _better_ since you met us, can you? And he’s one of the ones who actually survived. Not like - not like Kevin.”

Cas is silent for a long moment, absently stroking the page of the book he’s reading with one hand. “Kevin’s death was tragic,” he says. “And I do look back sometimes and remember Heaven as it was. I remember all the siblings I’ve lost and I miss them terribly. But do you know what, Sam?” He looks up, pinning Sam with his gaze. “That Heaven was rotted. It was rotted and corrupt and I didn’t just learn that, I knew it then. I could sense that something was wrong. And I knew what I was feeling had to be wrong, so I tried hard, _so hard_ to be what I was supposed to be, to be obedient and dutiful and to love my Father’s creations but to never, ever actually feel.”

He leans forward, eyes boring into Sam’s. “Can you imagine that, Sam? Can you imagine an eternal existence of knowing you’re broken and flawed and trying so hard to be right? My friendship with you and your brother is an eyeblink compared to how long I’ve been alive. Did you ever wonder why I was so quick to abandon it all and join you? Since I met you I’ve been through a lot of pain, It’s true. I’ve hated a lot of it. But I look back at the being I was before and I am _ashamed_ of him, Sam. I’ve fought hard to become what I am now. Don’t you _dare_ take that away from me and try to call it friendship.” 

He shoves his chair back and stalks away. “ _Cas,”_ Sam says, startled and worried, but Cas’s steps don’t even falter. Sam gives Mary a pleading look.

“Let him go,” Mary says quietly. “I think he’ll need a minute.”

She turns her attention to the research Cas left behind, and Sam falls silent. It’s several minutes before he tries to do any reading himself.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Cas returns about half an hour later and goes directly back to work. Sam shoots him a few guilty looks, but doesn’t try to interrupt. It’s not the way Mary had planned to start the morning and it’s certainly not the opening salvo that either she or Cas were expecting, but it does seem to have made an impact. Mary can’t help but think that anything that makes Sam look outside the bubble of his relationship with Dean has to be a good thing.

A little before midday, tired of trying to find mentions of ‘Muriel’ in the Men of Letters’ endless, needlessly dense filing system (seriously, why label things in cuneiform?), she gets up to stretch and just happens to wander over to the map table in the atrium. Dean, Dorothy and Charlie are deep in a discussion of how best to classify the different reports Charlie’s getting off the internet and what to do about getting crime scene pictures from as many of them as possible, but they break it off when she leans against the table.

“My head hurts,” Charlie whines, glancing at Mary. “Can we take a break, please?”

Dorothy reaches over and rubs Charlie’s head, mussing her hair and laughing when she complains. “Sure. Wouldn’t want to break that brain. I’ll go get us some city juice.” 

At their blank looks, she rolls her eyes. “Water. I’m going to get us some water.”

“Oh!” Charlie says, looking relieved. “Thanks, that would be great.” After Dorothy’s left, Charlie explains, “She’s getting better about the 30s slang, but sometimes it still kind of pops out.”

“Makes sense,” Dean says, and Mary decides to take his word for it. She catches Charlie’s eye, wondering if she’s been able to make any progress, but Charlie just grimaces and shakes her head. So much for that, then. 

“How’s it going here?” Mary asks, absently tucking the tag back into the collar of Dean’s shirt.

He makes a face and straightens, leaning into her hand a little. “Well, we’ve made some progress. It’s depressing progress, but there you go.” He gestures at the map. “We’re trying to find as many possible battle sites as we can, see if we can get a big picture going and maybe start to anticipate this stuff. Once we’ve got a little more we’ll be able to dig Cas out of the library and see what he thinks. How’s it going over there?”

“Sam’s okay,” Mary says, deliberately misinterpreting the question. “He’s a little frustrated, because we’re not finding much, but I think he’s mostly okay.”

Dean crosses his arms and glowers. Crap. “That’s not what I asked. I don’t care how he’s doing.”

“Yes, you do,” Mary says calmly. “I might not know much, but I know that.”

Dean shrugs off her hand and moves away to the end of the table under the pretense of sorting through some papers. 

“Dean?” Charlie says nervously, “You know you’re like my big brother, right? That makes you and Sam pretty much the only family I’ve got. I just - what happened to you guys? I hate to see you like this.”

Dean wavers in the face of Charlie’s earnest concern. “Look, Charlie, it’s not - don’t worry about it, okay? We can still get the job done.”

“This has to do with what you wouldn’t tell me before, doesn’t it?” Charlie presses.

Dean sighs. “Okay. Yeah. So, you did die before. There was an angel in Sam and I asked him to heal you. That’s why you came back.”

“Whoa,” Charlie says, and Mary completely believes that she’s never heard any of this before. It’s pretty impressive. “Did, did Sam know the angel was there?”

Dean swallows and shakes his head, guilt all over his face. “No. That was one of the conditions.”

That’s news to Mary. “Were there other conditions?”

Dean looks away. It’s probably supposed to come off as annoyance, but it reads more like an attempt to avoid making eye contact. “Uh, Cas couldn’t be around, either. Junkless told me that Cas’s presence would draw attention and that if Sam figured out he was there he would boot him out before all the healing was done. He was totally paranoid about being found by any of the other angels, which makes a lot more sense now.” He gives a disgusted sigh. “I should have just... Cas was _safe_ in the bunker. His face when I told him to leave, he didn’t - he didn’t understand. He just couldn’t understand why I was doing it.”

Mary’s got a pretty good idea what being told to leave did to Cas, but right now the focus has to be on Dean’s guilt about Sam. “And if you broke either of the rules Sam would die,” she says, trying to push them back on topic.

“Yeah.” He shakes his head, and then continues all in a rush. “I _wanted_ to tell Sam, Mom. I tried a couple of times. He was sitting there, telling me about how he must have something wrong with him, that he must have _always_ had something wrong with him -” he cuts himself off, anguished. “I couldn’t let him think that. I _couldn’t_. But before I could say anything Angel McDoucheface cut in and said he’d leave Sam if I tried again. And then it all fell apart anyway and Kevin...” he swallows hard. “He said that every time he trusted us he got screwed, and I told him everything would be fine, and then Gadreel killed him.”

Charlie makes a distressed noise and darts around the table to give Dean a hug. “Man, that sucks.”

Dean rests his chin on the top of her head. “Sam’s angriest at me for not letting him die,” he says, and it sounds like the words were forced out of him.

“I’ve talked to him a little bit about that,” Mary says quietly. “I think it’s mostly that it scares him when he sees how much you’re willing to compromise just to keep him alive.”

“Oh, what the fuck am I _supposed_ to do?” Dean snaps, irritated. He’s still holding Charlie, but he’s glaring now. “It’s my job to keep him alive.”

Charlie pulls back a little. “Because your Dad told you it was your job?”

Dean lets her go so suddenly she bumps up against the map table. “Okay, you know what? That‘s enough of this conversation.”

“Want to help me make lunch?” Mary says quickly. The last thing she wants is for Dean to stew over this and get even angrier. “Just making lunch, I promise,” she adds, when he looks skeptical. If Dean is as much like her as Cas says, then doing something to take care of somebody else will probably calm him down faster than anything short of a good fight.

“No talking,” Dean says suspiciously.

“Well, I might ask you to hand me something,” Mary says dryly.

“Okay, fine,” Dean says. “Let’s make lunch.”

Mary keeps to her word. She doesn’t say a thing to Dean in the kitchen besides the bare minimum required to gather the materials necessary for an array of sandwiches to bring upstairs.

Dean breaks the silence himself. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Mary raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You’re thinking about how much Dad must have fucked up to turn us into this.”

Okay, that’s actually pretty accurate. Add a side-order of guilt for letting it happen and he’d be spot on. “It’s not… quite that simple,” Mary says slowly. “Yeah, I’m angry with your Dad for telling you that, because protecting Sammy was his responsibility and he never should have put it all on you. He failed his responsibility to _you_ when he did that. But I’m also… I am glad you two watch out for each other, Dean. When I was pregnant with Sammy I used to take you to the park and watch the other kids play and I used to pray that you wouldn’t turn out like some of the siblings I saw, who bullied each other or picked on each other or just didn’t care. But it’s…” she pauses for a long moment, choosing her words with care. “I worry, a little, that you’ve gotten to be so good at taking care of each other that you don’t know how to let go. Find your own lives. Or, or survive losing each other, in all the ways that can happen. Not just death,” she adds, holding up a hand to keep Dean from responding. “Moving away or finding different interests or falling in love. Any of those things.”

“Mom, we’re never going to have any of that,” Dean says tiredly. “There’s no normal life for us. Even if by some miracle the world _isn’t_ ending right now there’ll just be another catastrophe down the road. I thought Sam could get out, once, and I even tried it myself, but it’s too late. We don’t know how to be anything but this. I know it isn’t what you wanted.”

“Screw what I wanted,” Mary says. “What do _you_ want?”

“God, Mom, I don’t fucking know,” Dean says, more plaintive than exasperated. “It’s a moot point anyway.”

“Okay,” Mary says soothingly, hefting a plate of sandwiches. “Start small, then. Ham and cheese or pb and j?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “I dunno. Both.”

“Want me to cut the crusts off?”

“... Yeah,” Dean says in a small voice.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They swap places again after lunch, Cas going to help Dorothy and Dean with the map table and Charlie and Mary switching over to research. They’ve barely gotten started, though, when Dean pops his head in and says “Hey, Charlie, we need your mojo.”

Charlie gives her an apologetic look and goes, leaving her behind with Sam and Garth.

Mary pulls over a blank piece of paper and starts to doodle, trying to clear her mind before starting things up again with Sam. It’s been an exhausting morning, although she does feel like the conversations have been good. It would be nice to have an hour to put her thoughts in order or maybe use the target range she’s pretty sure exists somewhere.

“What’s that?” Garth asks.

Mary frowns down at the paper. “I’m trying to recreate a sigil I saw a few days ago.” She gives him a sheepish look. “Okay, mostly I’m trying to do something left-brained to clear my head.”

“Can I look?” Sam asks, perking up a little. It looks like everybody could use a bit of a break.

She pushes the paper over to him. “It’s not right, but I think it’s close. Cain had it on a necklace.”

“It doesn’t look familiar,” Sam says, disappointed. “And unfortunately we don’t have much in the way of an Enochian dictionary. Well. We have Cas, I guess.”

“I have to say,” Mary says, a strategy glimmering in the back of her mind, “I do miss the way hunting used to be in the old days.”

Sam smiles at her. “What, uphill both ways in the snow?”

Mary laughs. “No, smart aleck. It was more collaborative. More like a culture. This lone hunter thing is really weird for me.”

Sam leans forward, his academic interest piqued. “Really? I thought it was the norm.”

Mary shrugs. “It might be now, but when I was growing up hunters mostly operated in families or in alliances like the Men of Letters. Even the ones who hadn’t been raised in it would find some kind of network. There were a lot of… meeting points, I guess you’d call them. Bars or motels run by hunters, or maybe just a retired hunter who had a few extra bedrooms. It was a good way to share knowledge, make sure everyone was okay.”

“We had a friend who ran a hunter bar,” Sam says thoughtfully. “Ellen Harvelle. We didn’t meet her until after Dad died, though. We had no idea that kind of place existed. Dad knew hunters, but he didn’t really pal around with them. The closest he got was probably Pastor Jim and Bobby, and Pastor Jim he mostly used for babysitting. Well, and there was Ellen’s husband, but that ended badly.”

“It’s not good to be a lone hunter,” Mary says, shaking her head. “This job, it’s too easy to get trapped in the bad stuff. You get tangled up, with tracking one monster in particular or maybe with protecting one person above all else. Like your brother, actually. You’re the only constant he’s ever had. For him there’s no world without you and that isn’t healthy, ultimately. ”

Sam leans back, expression closing off. Help comes, unexpectedly, from Garth.

“I’ve always hunted alone,” he says quietly. “I took over Bobby’s role because someone needed to, but I mostly did it because he knew so many people and I wanted that. I wanted there to be someone who would notice if I went missing.” He looks at Sam. “I know you’re upset with Dean right now, and I know I don’t know all the details why. I just know that you’re my friends and you’ve always been there for each other and it’s terrible to watch something so solid fall apart.”

Sam sighs. “Look, I get what you’re saying, but you have to understand what a huge breach of trust it was.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Garth says before Mary can respond. “But I don’t think Dean would have done it if he didn’t have to. Have you asked him about it?”

“Of course I did.”

“Did you listen?” Garth asks. He raises his hands when Sam glares. “No judging, my friend. Just a question. I’ve found that when I’m angry with someone it can really help to just listen to them for a bit.”

Sam snorts. “You’re never angry at anyone, Garth. We had a cursed-penny adventure to prove it.”

“And listening is why,” Garth says triumphantly.

Sam gives Mary a sardonic look. She smiles.

“Sweetie, no one’s trying to say you shouldn’t feel betrayed. You _were_ betrayed, and you have every right to be angry and confused and anything else. Just, keep in mind for a moment that Dean might be feeling the same way for reasons that are also valid.”

Sam sighs and picks up his book. “I’ll think about it,” he says grudgingly.

“Okay,” Mary says, giving Garth a smile. Frankly, that was a lot further than she thought she’d get.

“I do understand,” Sam says suddenly.

Mary looks back at him, startled. “I’m sorry?”

“I do understand that it isn’t good to hunt alone. When Dean was in Hell... and then there was another time a trickster made me think Dean was dead for a few months, and I wasn’t - I became - it wasn’t good.” He trails off, shifting uncomfortably. “So, I’ll think about it.”

“Okay,” Mary says.

“Okay.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They keep at it until Mary’s butt gets sore and she starts hallucinating Muriel’s name in the margins of the extremely dull book on angel lore she’s struggling through. She pushes back from the table with a sigh, relieved beyond all measure to see Cas approaching.

“How are you guys doing over there?”

Cas scowls. “We’re making progress. It isn’t particularly pleasant.”

“Well, that sounds encouraging,” Mary says dryly.

“It wasn’t meant to,” Cas says, scowl deepening. “The battles are increasing in size and number and both Abaddon and Malachi tend towards unconventional and ruthless tactics. Even without taking the reappearance of the Croatoan virus into account, it’s only a matter of time before the collateral damage becomes too overwhelming for even the media to ignore, at which point I predict a mass panic and the usual fear-based idiocy that typically comes with it. How is your task?”

Well, that’s cheerful. And probably very accurate. “I’m coming up blank on Muriel,” Mary sighs. “Sam, how’s Cain coming?”

“It’s a little difficult to tell how much of this is legend and how much is useful,” Sam says, shrugging. “But I’d say -”

“What’s that?” Cas demands, leaning forward to snatch the paper with Mary’s sigil off the table.

“It’s from Cain’s necklace, or as close as I can get to it,” Mary says. “Does it look familiar?”

Cas ignores her completely, grabbing the pen out of her hand and leaning down to alter the sigil. He works for a moment and then leans back, studying it.

Mary cranes her neck to get a look. It’s her sigil, but more detailed and slightly altered. “That’s it exactly. How did you know?”

Cas shakes his head. He looks a little dazed.

“Do you know what it means?”

“No,” Cas says.

Mary shoots Sam a puzzled look and is unreassured by the expression she gets in return. “So, what does _that_ mean? That you don’t know what it means.” That didn’t come out quite right. God, her brain is fried.

“I’m not sure,” Cas says pensively, putting the pen down. “I will go see if this sigil has appeared at any of the skirmishes Charlie has investigated.”

Mary and Sam hesitate for about half a second before scrambling to follow him, Garth just a beat behind. As they enter the atrium Dorothy is saying “- classic tactic, actually, I’m surprised it worked as well as it did,” but she stops short when she sees them coming.

“Have you seen this symbol?” Cas asks, holding the paper out to Charlie.

Charlie blinks and takes it. “Um, maybe. Gimme a sec.” She sets the paper down on the table next to her and bends over her little Star Trek device.

From her other side, Dean gives Mary a pointedly inquiring look. He’s blatantly ignoring Sam, but at least Sam seems to be ignoring him right back. Mary shrugs and goes with, “It’s the symbol from the necklace Cain was wearing. We’re not sure what it means.”

Dean gives Cas a startled look. “You don’t recognize it?”

“I recognize it,” Cas says, shrugging helplessly. “I’m unsure as to its significance.”

“Here, is this it?” Charlie asks, turning her portable screen thing around.

They crowd in close. Mary’s pretty sure she accidentally elbows someone, but that fades from her mind as soon as she sees the girl in the picture.

“I saw her,” she says, surprised. “She was one of the people from Cantril. The, um, the dead vessels. I remember the silver pendant.”

“I remember her too,” Dean says. “You were standing by her body right before we left.”

“That’s not all,” Charlie says, doing something magical with her finger that makes the picture swap places with another. “It showed up at something the cops are calling a mugging, too.”

This picture isn’t from one of the battles. It’s a body, slumped against what Mary’s going to guess is an alley wall, and there’s no necklace. Instead the sigil was carved into the cement above the ashy shadow of dead angel wings, and then very emphatically crossed out.

“Okay, so what does _that_ mean?” Dorothy asks.

“Hang on,” Sam says thoughtfully, “who won the battle in Cantril?”

“It’s hard to say for sure, but most likely Bartholomew,” Cas says, darting a glance at Dean. Dean seems to be pretending that no one has spoken, least of all Sam, but at least they’re in the same room together and have yet to resort to violence or name-calling. Mary’s willing to take her victories where she can find them.

“Well, maybe it’s like a cult sign or something,” Sam suggests. “I mean, look at it - we’ve got an angel dead in a battle with it, we’ve got Cain wearing it and he’s like, an uber-demon, and we’ve got it defaced over an angel execution. It’s not a banishing, it’s not that mourning symbol, and it’s not a - a gang sign, or whatever it was Malachi’s guys did in the bar after they beat Bartholomew. So what would two angels and a demon have in common? And why would one of them be killed for it?”

Mary turns to Cas. “Do angels have cults?”

“These days?” Cas says wearily. 

Mary makes a face. That’s a fair point. “I guess the real question is: does this have something to do with Muriel, or do we have another totally new factor on our hands?”

There’s no answer, of course, and she wasn’t expecting one.

She does have an idea of where to start looking, though.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_This time, the blonde woman chooses to perch on the desk across from Mary’s bed, feet lined up neatly on the seat of the chair. It’s a pose that should look casual and friendly, but it mostly comes off as expectant and a little unsure._

_“Hello, Muriel,” Mary says._

_She’d been prepared for any number of responses to using the angel’s name, but she’s caught by surprise when Muriel just smiles gently at her. With her big brown eyes, it makes her look positively adorable._

_“Well done, Mary.”_

_“Uh, thanks,” Mary says, a little thrown. Most of the strategies she’d come up with before bed seem a little excessive in the face of Muriel’s apparent friendliness, so she goes for the direct approach. “Are you the one who brought me back?”_

_Muriel tilts her head, sobering. “Yes, Mary. We have a very important task for you, if you’ll agree to it.”_

_“I’d like to hear what it is, first,” Mary says carefully._

_Muriel nods, unsurprised. “Do you understand what angels must do in order to interact with your plane of existence?”_

_“Take vessels?” Mary guesses. This seems familiar, somehow._

_“Yes. It is a great honor to be chosen as a vessel, Mary. Only very special humans can do it, and for the most powerful angels it takes someone even rarer. You are one of those rare humans, Mary.”_

__Angelic names have power, _Cas had said. Mary doesn’t think it works the same way with humans, but the way Muriel keeps repeating her name makes her a little uncomfortable. “Which angel do you have in mind, Muriel?”_

_Muriel leans forward, eager and earnest. “One of the greatest of us,” she says. “It is an incalculable gift that is being offered to you, Mary. This angel is ancient and kind and has never taken a vessel before. You would be the first, the one to bring the chaos and darkness around us to an end. You could stop the suffering of your children, Mary. Don’t you want that?”_

_Mary bites back on the instinctive ‘yes’. She wants to protect her children, of course, but she’s not going to be tricked into agreeing to something. She’s also nearly positive that she’s had this exact conversation before. “I would like to know the angel’s name.”_

_Muriel sits back, frowning a little. Cas can be stiff and ignorant of human customs, but his expressions never look like this - ever-so-slightly subtly_ off _in a way that makes Mary want to lean away. It’s a guess, but she doesn’t think Muriel has a lot of experience with being in a vessel._

_“You are still wary of me,” she says._

_Mary shrugs. “I’m wary of everyone.”_

_Muriel’s shoulders slump - unevenly, like her body knows it’s the correct thing to do in this situation but her mind is a step behind. “I understand your trepidation. We angels have fallen far from our purpose. Your existence today is hard and cold and there is no divinity in it, no evidence of Heavenly love. Why should you trust us?”_

_“I trust Cas,” Mary says. It slips out automatically._

_Muriel’s expression hardens. “Castiel has Fallen farther than all of us, save perhaps Lucifer. It was not always so.” She gives Mary a despairing look. “He was a good angel. He wasn’t perfect, but he tried hard and he loved our Father. You may not believe it, but once I counted him as a friend. It is not his fault that he Fell so, Mary. He was forced into it, and for no reason. Everything that came after, all the death and pain... it was his doing, yes, but it was so easily avoided. I hold only pity for him.”_

_“What do you mean?” Mary asks, momentarily derailed. “Why wasn’t it his fault?”_

_Muriel tilts her head. “Ask him why he doesn’t remember me, Mary. Ask him how he found the Righteous Man. Perhaps then you will see I am to be trusted, and why you must help me to end this.”_

_“Wait,” Mary says urgently, recognizing this as an end to the conversation. “You haven’t told me the angel’s name!”_

_Muriel smiles that gentle smile again. “You’ll remember this dream, Mary, and there is still time.”_

_“As a mark of trust,” Mary persists._

_Muriel considers this. “That is fair,” she says finally. “The angel is Israfel. Known as the Burning One, the Dust Collector, one of the Four Pillars upon which God built the Earth. Israfel sang us to life and Israfel will sing us to death. The time draws near, Mary. The end has come. We call upon you to save us all.”_

Mary sits up and lunges for the lamp beside her bed, but it’s too late. She’s awake and the angel is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry! I know I said I’d try to avoid any more cliffhangers. But it was just such a good place to stop!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: In places this chapter deals with memory loss and the aftermath of a canonical mind rape. It’s not graphic, but anyone sensitive to those subjects should probably be cautious.  
> SPOILERS: *deep breath* 4x01 ‘Lazarus Rising’, 4x03 ‘In the Beginning’, 4x16 ‘On the Head of a Pin’, 4x22 ‘Lucifer Rising’, 5x16 ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, 8x17 ‘Goodbye Stranger’, 8x19 ‘Taxi Driver’, 8x21 ‘The Great Escapist’, 9x04 ‘Slumber Party’, 9x14 ‘Captives’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Canon. All the canon. _So much_ canon. Plus some geography and theology.  
>  NEW TAGS: Redacted for spoiler reasons *drumroll*  
> NOTES: Maaaan, the first half of this chapter fought me _so hard_. But it’s done! It has been vanquished! MWAHAHA. It kind of turned into another long chapter, sorry about that. It wouldn’t end and neither would the End Notes, which by this point are practically their own novel.

With her adrenaline thrumming and her eyes watering from the sudden bright light, it takes Mary a moment of careful breathing to back off from the fight-or-flight instinct triggered by her sudden awakening. She presses her hands against the soft flannel and sturdy cotton of her bedding, and reminds herself firmly that Muriel was never really here and the bunker is still safe.

When she’s steady again, she gets up and leaves her room, driven more by a need to work off the residual adrenaline than a desire to find anyone in particular. She definitely does need to talk to Cas, about Muriel’s hints regarding his memory and about Israfel, but her mind is in so much turmoil that she isn’t entirely sure she’ll be able to lay the whole thing out coherently. Still, Cas doesn’t sleep any more, and he’s probably lurking around somewhere. He can be such a calming presence that she’s hoping just sitting quietly next to him will help her put everything in order.

Instead of Cas, she finds Dorothy staring down at the map table when she wanders through the library and out into the atrium. She doesn’t really know much about Dorothy, besides the fact that she’s Charlie’s friend, so she hesitates just a second before continuing on into the room.

Dorothy looks up as she approaches. Her eyes are tired and her usually neat bun is sporting several flyaway strands of hair, but she smiles crookedly as Mary reaches the table.

“Glad to see I’m not the only night owl.”

Mary smiles back automatically and leans against the table. “Weird dream. Have you seen Cas?”

Dorothy shakes her head. “He was here earlier, but he went off a few hours ago. Said he needed some shuteye.”

Mary frowns, concerned. It’s probably another sign of Cas’s stolen Grace, and she doesn’t like it. Finding him and waking him up isn’t going to help, though.

“Anything I can do to help?” Dorothy asks. “I spent some time here back in the day and I’m going crosseyed staring at this stuff.”

“Back in the day?” Mary asks, intrigued. She’d thought the bunker had been abandoned when the Men of Letters disappeared in the fifties.

“1935, when I trapped myself in a bottle with the Wicked Witch of the West for seventy years to keep her from getting back to Oz,” Dorothy says, and sighs at Mary’s expression. “Yeah, I’m that Dorothy. I take it you read Dad’s books.”

“Saw the movie, actually,” Mary says, gaping. Granted, she probably should have put together ‘Dorothy’ and ‘Oz’ sooner, but in her own defense Oz is _fictional_.

“There’s a movie?” Dorothy says, horrified.

“A musical. Came out in… 1939, I think?”

Dorothy whimpers and buries her face in her hands. “A musical. A _musical_. This explains so many of the weird things Charlie has said to me. I am going to set something _on fire_.”

“So, uh, you spent time with the Men of Letters in the 30s?” Mary asks, hoping to distract Dorothy from carrying through on her threat.

“As little time as possible, but yes,” Dorothy says, straightening. “I was a hunter.”

“Oh, really?” Mary says. “Maybe you knew my parents - Samuel and Deanna Campbell? Well, I guess she was still ‘Moore’, then.” They would have been teenagers in 1935, but they’d both come from hunter families. It’s not impossible.

To her surprise, Dorothy laughs. “Deanna Moore! She was a firecracker, that one. Golly, we used to get into trouble together - she was just a kid but she had her head screwed on straight. Seems to have trained you up well, too.”

“She did,” Mary says, smiling back. “And now that I think of it, she used to watch _The Wizard of Oz_ every time she said she needed a good laugh.”

Dorothy rolls her eyes, still smiling. “Sounds like her, all right. Hey, come with me, I want to check something out.”

Bemused, Mary follows her down into the garage. Dorothy stops in front of the back wall, hands on her hips in satisfaction. “See that scorch mark?”

Mary squints. The wall is stained in a couple of places, with age as well as other things, but when she tries she can make out a fan-shaped plume of darker cement that starts at the floor and spreads up towards the ceiling. “Did you do that?”

“The two of us did,” Dorothy says, grinning. “It was while they were building this place. Deanna’s aunt Ezra had come to consult with the pencil-necks about something and brought her along. We got into the alchemical supplies and made a little mischief. They made us scrub for hours but we couldn’t ever get rid of it completely.” She winks. “Not that we were trying very hard. I’m glad it’s still here.” 

Her smile falters a little and Mary bumps her shoulder with her own. “We should make some sort of Accidental Time-Travelling Club,” she suggests. “Time Displacement? Something like that. We’ve got the 30s and the 80s covered and I bet we’d get a few more decades if we started looking, hunting being what it is.”

Dorothy laughs. “I like it. Maybe if we pooled our resources we could build some rocket cars. I’m just not sure I really buy a future without them, I have to say.”

“I expected we’d at least have a colony on Mars by now,” Mary agrees, and they fall silent contemplating the scorch mark. Mary’s seen pictures of her mother when she was this age. She wonders if Dorothy was in any of them.

“So, what was your weird dream about?” Dorothy asks after a little bit. “Call me whacky, but I’ve spent enough time in Oz to take dreams pretty seriously.”

“It wasn’t actually a dream,” Mary admits. “With the amount of warding we’ve got up, the only way for Muriel to contact me is through dreams. It was more of a conversation.”

“Learn anything?” Dorothy asks, eyebrows raised.

Mary sighs. “I think I ended up with more questions than answers, but at least one of the answers I did get was a pretty important one. Have you ever heard of the angel Israfel?”

Dorothy purses her lips contemplatively. “No, but angels were never really my thing. Want to check the archives? There have to be a few books we haven’t already brought upstairs.”

Mary huffs out a laugh - over the past day or so they _have_ relocated a pretty big chunk of the Men of Letters’ back catalogue to the library table. 

“Sure. Lead the way.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By the time Mary and Dorothy finish scoring the archives and make their way upstairs again, it’s much later in the morning than Mary would have expected. She stands in the library door, blinking in the sun from the clerestory windows, and it takes her a moment to realise that Cas, Charlie, and Garth are already gathered around the table in front of her.

It takes her another moment to realise that no one’s working on anything. They’re all just sitting there, silently, looking anxious.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” Mary asks wearily as Dorothy adds the three new books they’d managed to find to an already precarious pile on top of one of the bookcases.

Charlie jumps. “Oh! Hi. Um. Sam and Dean are in the kitchen.”

It takes a moment for the penny to drop. “Hang on, together? What are they doing?”

“Talking,” Garth says, looking twitchy. 

“This morning Charlie found a report about another town with the Croatoan virus,” Cas explains. “The National Guard and the CDC appear to have the situation in hand at the moment, but Dean thinks it would be a good idea to contact Crowley for information. Sam thinks this is a reckless and ultimately useless endeavor. That was the beginning of the discussion.”

“I tried to eavesdrop, but they caught me,” Charlie sighs.

Mary gives Cas a surprised look. “Can’t you hear anything from here?”

Everyone turns to look at him accusingly. He stares back, unperturbed. “They’ve drifted considerably from the original topic.”

“But you can hear them,” Garth says, caught somewhere between impressed and desperately curious.

Cas raises his eyes heavenward as if asking for patience, but complies with the implied request. “Sam is currently demanding the right to make his own choices. Now Dean is apologizing for lying while simultaneously accusing Sam of leaving him. Now Sam is calling Dean codependent. Now Dean is referencing a childhood event I don’t completely understand. Now Sam is drawing an analogy that somehow involves Dean’s sexual history. Now Dean is insisting that - ah.”

There’s a complicated crash from the kitchen.

“The situation has deteriorated,” Cas says, completely deadpan.

There’s another crash. Mary rolls her eyes and takes off for the kitchen.

By the time she gets there the fight is pretty much over. Sam is staunching a bloody nose with a dishtowel and Dean is hunched over and clutching himself.

“Jerk,” Sam mumbles through the wadded-up fabric.

“Bitch,” Dean wheezes, red-faced.

“Oh, thank God,” Charlie mutters. Mary sighs.

“Dorothy, would you grab the first aid -”

Cas reaches out and taps first Dean and then Sam on the forehead with his fingers. They both breathe sighs of relief as their injuries heal.

Mary gives him a stern look. She’s probably the only one who noticed the almost perfectly concealed grimace of pain as he did each healing, but she was also looking for it. He shrugs unapologetically.

She can talk to him in private later. She’ll settle for easier targets right now. “I understand that you boys are angry with each other,” she says, hands on her hips, “but you will refrain from causing each other physical harm _do I make myself clear.”_

There are two sheepish ‘sorry, Mom’s.

“I expect this kitchen to be cleaned up the next time I come down here,” she continues. It’s not actually too trashed, but it’s the principle of the thing. Hopefully making them work together won’t result in _more_ collateral damage. “And making breakfast for everyone would make for a good apology. We have enough people outside this bunker trying to hurt us without this kind of foolishness inside as well.”

“Yes, Mom,” Sam says meekly. Dean scuffs the ground with his boot and nods.

“Upstairs, everybody, show’s over,” Mary says, ushering everyone out. She’ll have to circle around later and make sure Dean knows she isn’t really that angry with him - she has an inkling that he’ll take being lectured a lot harder than Sam will.

A thought occurs to her as they make their way back to the library. “Do they know how to cook?” she asks Charlie in an undertone.

“I think Dean does,” Charlie says.

“Oh, good.” She’d eat whatever they made anyway, of course, but it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.

Breakfast is a quiet affair. Sam and Dean produce cereal, toast, and coffee in an impressively short period of time, and aside from a brief scuffle between Charlie and Garth regarding ownership of the last of the Lucky Charms the whole thing is mostly non-violent. Mary’s still grappling with how to present the information - or lack thereof - from her talk with Muriel the night before, and doesn’t put much effort into starting conversation.

“All right,” she says once the dishes have been cleared away and they’ve returned to the library. Nobody’s really sat down again yet, still waiting to figure out if they’re going to divide up like yesterday or if there’s a new game plan in the works because of the latest Croatoan outbreak, so they’re all sort of scattered around the library. “Muriel did her dreamwalking thing last night and I talked to her a little bit.”

Talking with Dorothy and spending some time combing through the archives had helped her put the previous night into at least a little bit of perspective and given her just enough distance to start linking things together. She’s still confused as hell and worried about it all, but she feels better now that she has an inkling of how to proceed.

Sam spins around from where he’d been sorting through some of last night’s research materials, pinning her with an intense look. “Dreamwalking? Has she done this before?”

“Not that I remembered until recently,” Mary assures him. “The point is, she said she knew you, Cas.”

Cas frowns, leaning back against the library table. “I said before that I didn’t know her.”

Mary watches him carefully. “She said to ask you why you don’t remember her and how you found someone called the Righteous Man.”

“Logically, that first question makes no sense,” Charlie complains, but Cas looks thoughtful.

“Dean is the Righteous Man,” he says. “When my superiors discovered Lilith’s plans to break the First Seal on Lucifer’s cage, I was sent to Hell to find him before it could be done. Of course, we now know that was a ruse.”

“Well, here’s a question,” Dean says. “How did you find me in Hell? I mean, obviously that’s where I was, but Hell is huge. How did you know where to look?”

“I… just knew,” Cas says slowly. “No. I had a map? It was old. Hand-drawn by an angel who had been to Hell before me.”

“Muriel?” Sam guesses.

Cas shakes his head. “Sophia, but I didn’t get it from her. I... don’t remember where it came from.”

“Maybe Muriel had it,” Charlie suggests. She and Dorothy are the only ones sitting down, and they’re watching the whole conversation with wide-eyed curiosity.

“The real question,” Garth pipes up from halfway behind one of the bookshelves, “Is what do you know about not remembering?”

It’s a bizarre, contradictory thing to say, but Cas abruptly goes very, very still, his face utterly blank.

“Cas?” Dean asks cautiously.

Cas looks at him. The movement is slow and jerky, as if he has to consciously think about every muscle he needs to use in order to make his head turn. “Naomi. It must have been Naomi.”

His expression is thunderous. Mary finds herself fighting not to take a step back. She knows that Cas can be dangerous, but she’s rarely this aware of it. The very air around him seems to pulse with something primally threatening and only barely contained. Whoever this Naomi is, Mary would bet that she’s got a very short lifespan in front of her.

Charlie raises one hand, shrinking back when Cas turns to look at her. “Subtitles, please? Who’s Naomi?”

“She was in charge of Heaven for a while,” Dean says, his face grim. “She nearly brainwashed Cas into killing us.”

“She did more than that,” Cas says. He’s as monotone as ever, but she can see his hand clenching and unclenching at his side. “She was in charge of the re-education program. Every time an angel was deemed too radical, too far from mandate, too - too emotional, it was her job to reform that angel into a perfect servant of Heaven. Her work was so secret that most of us never knew it was happening until we were in her chair. She wiped our memories afterwards.”

“She did this to you more than once?” Mary asks, horrified. Screw Cas’s revenge - she’s going to get to this piece of shit first so that he never has to see her again.

“Many times,” Cas says hollowly. “I don’t know how many. But she said something to me once, she said that I had never followed my orders correctly and that there had always been a flaw in my design. If I had to guess I would say she had done it throughout my existence.” He rubs his head with one hand, an oddly human gesture. “I don’t think about it much. Something about my - my association with Muriel must have been deemed forbidden or dangerous in some way.”

“Is there a way to trigger your memory?” Sam asks. “Some spell or something?”

Cas shakes his head. “None that I know of.”

“You threw off her control once,” Dean says thoughtfully. “Did you ever figure out how? Maybe we can recreate it somehow. Without beating me half to death, preferably.”

Mary takes a deep breath. “Angelic names have power, right?” 

“Yes,” Cas says, watching her with a touch of curiosity. God, she hopes this works. She _really_ hopes it doesn’t hurt Cas.

She holds up the sheet of paper with Cain’s mysterious sigil on it and says “Israfel.”

It’s just a guess. An intuitive one, or maybe just a desperate one given that she’s basically throwing everything Cas can’t remember at him and hoping something sticks. And for a second it doesn’t seem like it works - Cas frowns slightly, as if he’s going to ask her what she’s doing, and then his eyes widen and he cries out in pain, clutching his head.

“Cas!” Dean grabs Cas to keep him from falling. “Mom, what did you do?”

Mary drops the paper and scrambles to support him from the other side. Every muscle in Cas’s body is rock-hard. It’s like trying to hold up a statue. “I don’t know,” she admits. “It was just a guess. Muriel said the angel they want me to - you know - is Israfel. Given our cult theory I figured that’s what the sigil might mean, and since Cas didn’t remember it either -”

“Cas?” Sam says, grabbing a chair from Dorothy and pushing it close in case Cas starts to fall. “Hey, Cas?”

Cas shudders once and manages to steady himself. Mary and Dean ease up a little but don’t let go. He’s pale and shaken and doesn’t look at all solid on his feet. 

“Cas?” Mary calls, rubbing his shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Cas grunts. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

Mary and Dean trade twin disbelieving looks. “You need to sit down?”

“No.” He lets go of his head and uses his hands to brace himself against the table instead. Dean and Mary back off reluctantly. “It’s passing. I’m fine.”

He still looks pretty awful. “Did you remember something?”

“Yes.” He presses his hand to his head and Dean visibly restrains himself from grabbing Cas again. “Yes. I, uh… it’s a little fragmented, but I do remember Muriel. I think she worked in the archives.” He glances up at Dean. “I think she may have been the one who tipped me off about the true plan for the Apocalypse, although I’m not sure whether it was intentional or accidental.”

“So when they pulled you back after you tried to warn us they wiped out your friendship with her?” Sam asks.

Cas nods. “At some point we must have also discussed Israfel, or I must have seen the sigil on one of my visits. I don’t think that knowledge was the target of any of Naomi’s work because I wouldn’t have recognized it at all if she’d been truly intent on eradicating it from my mind.”

“So who _is_ Israfel?” Charlie asks.

“It’s just an older name for Raphael,” Sam says. “I looked him up when Cas was fighting his civil war.”

Cas shakes his head. He looks a little steadier now that he’s focusing on knowledge that isn’t so fractured. “Incorrect, although I can see where the misconception arose. Raphael took over many of Israfel’s duties after his creation. No, Israfel was one of the first four archangels created by God. They worked with Him to build everything from this planet to the rest of the galaxy. To thank them for their service God made them into the fabric of this world. Angelic tradition holds that Israfel was the one charged with bringing every other angel into being.”

“Muriel said something like that,” Mary says. “She said, um… ‘Israfel sang us to life and Israfel will sing us to death.’”

“Yes,” Cas says heavily. “When the time comes, Israfel will be called into service one last time, for the end.”

“Another frigging Apocalypse?” Dean says, outraged.

“No,” Cas says. “The Apocalypse was merely the end of life on Earth and the ascent of whoever won the battle between Heaven and Hell. Israfel ushers in the end of everything.”

“Wouldn’t - wouldn’t that kind of thing require God, though?” Sam asks, looking scared.

Cas shrugs helplessly. “Ordinarily, yes, but we’ve been off-book for a while now.”

“And Israfel needs a vessel to rise?” Mary asks. Her mouth feels very dry. “Israfel needs me?”

“Yes,” Cas says, and although his words are blunt his tone is gentle and sympathetic. “The strongest bloodlines are capable of withstanding possession by any angel, but it’s best if there’s a certain… symbiosis. Lucifer and Michael were matched to Sam and Dean, and later Adam, because of their temperaments and blood relation.”

“So I get Israfel because, what, I ended the world?” Mary says, a little shrilly. She can’t deny that that’s what her death did to her family, in a localized kind of way, and it’s simplistic but her actions did cause her children to go on and start the Apocalypse… 

Well. Okay. She swallows hard. Every time she thinks she’s forced herself to face what she’s done, it comes along and punches her in the gut again. “I guess that’s a fair point.”

“And Israfel _sang_ us to life,” Cas says. “Tell me, Dean, how did your mother comfort you when you were a child?”

“She sang _Hey Jude,”_ Dean says quietly, shooting her an apologetic look.

Mary feels just a tiny bit faint.

“Don’t take it too hard,” Sam says, with a shaky smile. “I got Satan.”

“But it’s not that simple, right?” Dorothy asks, and Mary startles a little. She’d actually forgotten there were other people in the room. “It doesn’t sound like Israfel’s exactly easy to get a hold of. Wouldn’t the angels being cast out have -”

Cas is already shaking his head. “The first archangels have always been different. No spell of Metatron’s would affect them the way it would an ordinary angel. It is true that Muriel will have to get Israfel’s attention, but considering the resources she has had access to and the events that have happened in the last few years I don’t think it’ll be as hard as we’d like. The Apocalypse, the Civil War, the angels Falling from Heaven - all of those things will have caused tremors. Israfel and the others may already be aware of the situation to some degree.” He shrugs. “The good news is that Israfel will need consent, just like any other angel would.”

It seems like a very small thing to count as good news, particularly given how tricky angels have shown themselves to be around that issue. They’ve already tried to con her into consenting in her dreams, for crying out loud. She’s not sure she feels up to a battle of wits against an entire group of very focused angels.

Dean’s cell phone rings, startling them all. He glances down at the screen and grimaces. “Dammit. It’s Walt.” He steps away to answer.

“Dean sent Walt and Roy to go check out the new Croatoan outbreak,” Sam explains when Mary raises her eyebrows at him.”They’re assholes but they were the only ones in the area.”

“Okay, but here’s what I don’t get,” Garth says suddenly from the bookshelves. “How does Cain fit in? A demon working with angels just doesn’t seem right.”

“I don’t know about working with angels, but wanting to raise Israfel I understand,” Sam says quietly, sobering. “He’s spent an eternity forced to wander the Earth for failing his brother and there’s no end in sight. Israfel is probably the only out he’s got. I can - I can understand wanting to put that right, whatever it takes.”

“That’s bullshit,” Dean says hotly, turning away from his own conversation with his phone clenched in one hand. “You don’t get to destroy the world just because you feel guilty. You stay behind and you fucking fix it.”

“I’m not saying it’s right,” Sam says patiently. “I’m saying I understand it.”

Dean eyes him suspiciously for a moment. “Well, okay then,” he says finally.

Mary darts a glance at Charlie, who shrugs. Cas is frowning at both boys, but whether it’s for drifting off the topic or for saying something profound Mary can’t tell. Either way, the encounter didn’t end in an actual argument, so hey. Progress?

“Israfel’s involvement also explains why Cain was willing to fight off the demon army, and why he later came to your rescue in Blue Earth,” Cas says, seeing her look at him and misinterpreting it as a request for more information . “Without you, raising Israfel will be difficult if not impossible, and I would imagine that Muriel would be willing to set aside old resentments in return for Cain’s strength. Her people are likely spread across angelic factions anyway.”

On the one hand, it’s nice to have someone who wants her alive. On the other hand, it’s too bad they want her alive so that she can help end the world. You win some, you lose some. “Thanks, Cas.”

Sam gives her a sympathetic look and turns to Dean. “What did Walt have to say?” 

Dean’s expression clouds. “The Croats got past the National Guard and made a break for the next town over. They got it back under control, but if Roy hadn’t had a flamethrower it probably would have been a different story.”

“What kind of douchebag carries a flamethrower?” Sam says, exasperated.

“ _I know,”_ Dean says feelingly. Mary blinks in surprise at the blatant disregard, especially given that the flamethrower had apparently saved the day. She also would have thought that Dean would think a flamethrower was ‘cool’.

“Walt and Roy killed them once,” Cas explains in an undertone. “I suspect they harbor some resentment about it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Mary says, successfully distracted from the end of the world. “God, what _assholes.”_

“We got better,” Dean says, shrugging. “Anyway, Walt’s convinced we’re trying to kill him again, but it’s under control for the moment. Apparently the CDC is baffled,” he adds dryly.

“We need to figure out some kind of strategy for the virus, too,” Mary says, feeling a headache coming on. “We only have the manpower for so much. Is there a cure or -”

This time it’s Mary’s phone ringing that makes them all jump. She turns it on without looking at the screen, heart still thumping a bit.

“Actually, baby,” Missouri says before Mary has a chance to say hello, “I think I have just what you need.”

“Really?” Mary stammers, completely caught off-guard. Freaking psychics. “You know how to get rid of the virus?”

“What?” Missouri says. “No, your staffing problem. Sorry, sweetheart, you’ll have to figure out the virus on your own.”

“Oh.” Well, presumably ‘staffing problem’ has something to do with the fact that they’re hilariously outnumbered, and one problem down is still one problem down. “Okay, what about our staff?”

She can hear the smile in Missouri’s voice. “Make your way to the warehouse where you woke up. It’s a little easier to explain in person. Oh, and bring everyone with you.”

“Everyone who?” Mary asks, frowning.

“Everyone at the bunker,” Missouri says patiently. “I’ll see you in two hours.”

The phone goes dead. Mary scowls at it. “Missouri says we all need to go to the warehouse where I woke up. She’ll meet us there.”

“Okay, why?” Sam asks.

“A solution to our ‘staffing problems,” Cas says, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers as he says it. Mary files the gesture away for future reference - it seems handy.

“Okay, how?” Charlie asks.

Cas and Mary both shrug. “Freaking cryptic psychics,” Dean mutters.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Given that they’re a group of hunters and well-trained in hasty getaways, they’re all armed to the teeth and ready to go in under five minutes. After that it’s just the usual chaotic negotiation of who’s driving (Mary and Dean, with Dorothy on her motorcycle), who’s riding with who (Mary and Cas in one car, Sam, Dean, and Garth in the other, and Charlie in Dorothy’s sidecar), and who gets shotgun (Cas and Sam). Mary’s not sure how comfortable a long ride in a sidecar will be, but Charlie looks so thrilled by the idea that she doesn’t have the heart to say anything.

It surprises Mary a little, once they’re underway, to realise how much she’s missed traveling with Cas. She knows it’s a temporary feeling, but just looking over and seeing him in the passenger seat brings her right back to the comparatively simpler times of their first few trips together - before she’d started to figure out just how much of a mess she was in, before the angels had tried to capture them, before she’d even tried calling Sam and Dean. She feels guilty for her nostalgia, because she wouldn’t trade her present closeness with her children for anything even if it does come with its fair share of worry and dramatics, but it’s also suddenly tempting to ditch the highway for the quirky backroads of her childhood and go find a ghost to put to rest.

“Do you remember Philadelphia?” Cas asks, breaking the silence.

Mary grins, amused that they’re on the same page. “Sure do. That was fun.”

Cas smiles in agreement, and then sobers.

“What’s up?” Mary asks, keeping one eye on the road and one on Cas’s expression. He can be hard enough to read even when she can pay him full attention.

“I wonder a little,” Cas says slowly. “Given this morning’s revelations… do you remember what I told you my specialty was, back when we were staying in the ruined house?”

Mary thinks about it for a moment. “Tactics, right? And spellwork.”

“Sigils,” Cas corrects. “Yes, and that was why I was chosen for my Earthly duty. Once, before I came to doubt my role here and the justness of the plan we were trying to carry out, I built a trap in Old Enochian to hold a powerful demon while Dean... interrogated it.”

Mary nods, not entirely sure where he’s going with this but willing to let him take his time. “Is Old Enochian difficult?”

“Very,” Cas says. “To learn it one must spend a great deal of time studying. In the archives.” He takes a breath. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I can’t remember how I made that trap.” 

Mary darts a glance at him. He’s frowning slightly, and his hand is balled into a fist on his knee. “You think Naomi took it?”

“It never occurred to me to try to make another one afterwards,” Cas says pensively. “I wonder, I wonder that they were so afraid of who I was becoming that they would destroy that much knowledge. I must have known other rare things. I must have spent a lot of time in the archives to be considered a specialist. I’ve used sigils since then, even some rare ones, but I have to wonder how much I’ve lost.”

Mary takes his fist in her hand, rubbing his knuckles with her thumb until his muscles start to relax a little.

“Maybe that’s why you’re having trouble with your alchemy stuff,” she suggests.

Cas turns his hand over so he can hold hers back. “I wonder if I had it figured out once and I’m simply trying to redo my original work,” he says quietly.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Mary says softly. She can’t even imagine how scary it is to have memories just be gone like that. “Do you think you’ll be able to get any of it back?”

Cas shrugs. “I’ve been trying. I’ve remembered a few little things, I think, but mostly I’ve just given myself a headache.” 

Mary lets go of his hand so she can rub his head. “Hey, no hurting my friend.”

He smiles a little, ducking his head, and Mary lets the conversation lapse into silence. She’d intended to use the trip as an opportunity to talk to him about using his Grace unnecessarily, but it seems mean to make him get into that when he’s already feeling vulnerable. She’ll just have to keep an eye on him.

They make it to the warehouse after about an hour and a half of driving. Although Mary had known intellectually that it wasn’t all that far from the bunker, it’s still a little startling to realise how close she’d been to Sam and Dean all that time ago when she’d first woken up confused and in her nightie, next to a corpse with Cas being beaten to death by vengeful angels in the corner.

“I used to think your name was ‘Castle’,” she says fondly as they pull to a stop in front of the warehouse. The second car, the one she hadn’t stolen the first time around, is still there. There are weeds starting to grow around the tires and a bird has pooped on the windshield.

“When I first saw you I thought I was hallucinating,” Cas offers. “I wasn’t sure what a hallucination would look like but I was fairly certain you were one.”

Mary laughs. “Well, to be fair you had a fever and probably a concussion at the time.”

They loiter outside until everyone else has arrived and gotten themselves together, and then they make their way into the warehouse. It’s dirtier than Mary remembers, but better lit. Missouri is standing at the far end where the sigil used to be, helping Jody Mills set up what look to be crime scene floodlights.

Mary’s face breaks into an involuntary smile at the sight of them. They’ve been good friends and good allies in the short time since she’s been back, and she has few enough of both that it’s even more of a relief to see them.

“Wow, what’s with the doomsday stockpiling?” Dean asks, goggling at the tables of supplies set up against the left-hand wall. A quick glance tells Mary there’s a significant quantity of food, water, and what appears to be bedding stacked neatly on trestle tables.

“And the arsenal?” Sam says, eyeballing the tables against the right-hand wall.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t see any weapons,” Jody says cheerfully, standing up and dusting off the knees of her jeans. “I definitely don’t see illegal ones obtained through nefarious means that would get me fired if it wasn’t the end of the world.”

“That’s very specific,” Charlie murmurs.

“It’s good to see you again, Mary,” Missouri says, walking over. Her expression darkens as she takes in the boys. “I’m going to assume that _you two_ have been so busy in the last seven years that you never learned how to use a phone. I _know_ you never ended up back in Lawrence to do anything like _stop the Apocalypse_ without dropping by to say hello first.”

“Um. Sorry,” Sam says.

“Our bad,” Dean mumbles, and it’s not until Sam accidentally bumps her in the back that Mary realises they’re both trying to stand behind her.

“Huh,” Missouri says, unimpressed. “Well, at least you had the sense to come this time.”

“Can you tell us what the plan is?” Mary asks, partly to give the boys some relief and partly because from where she’s standing she can’t quite see what Jody’s working on and she’s dying of curiosity.

Missouri grins. “Baby, I’m glad you asked,” she says, beckoning them over.

To Mary’s surprise, the bloody sigil she’d woken up in is still there, although it’s now a faded rust-brown color. It’s also nearly invisible under a delicate network of new sigils done in what looks like white paint. They twine around the original markings, weaving in and out and turning the old symbols into something new. Mary thinks she sees Hebrew, Arabic, and possibly Urdu mixed in with the usual Latin and Enochian, combining to make a circle with seven larger markings spaced evenly around the circumference. There’s one more large sigil in the center, right where the corpse had been when Mary had woken up. 

“Something’s been bothering me about the way you came back, Mary,” Missouri says. Cas starts to walk slowly around the edge of the circle, inspecting it carefully. Missouri glances at him and then continues with her explanation. “There are several things that don’t match up. If you really stayed in your old house after you died, why didn’t I ever sense you? And how did you manage to stay there for twenty-two years without being noticed or becoming a vengeful spirit? Your death was certainly bloody enough for it. Why can’t you remember the time in between dying and seeing your boys? Why can’t you remember what came afterwards?

“The answer,” she continues, looking very pleased with herself, “is that you were being kept. They popped you back into your house to give your boys a nudge, and then they put you back on a shelf until you might be useful again. And given how many hunters we can’t account for in the afterlife, I don’t think you were the only one they kept in reserve.”

Beside her, Sam breathes in sharply. “Crowley kept Bobby’s soul after he died. Is Crowley -”

Missouri shakes her head. “No, Sam, this was the angels. Same reason, though - they kept what they thought might come in handy. Best guess is that they’ve been building a stash of hunters’ souls ever since they decided to start up the Apocalypse, because there’s no telling when a vessel or a tame monster hunter might be of use. Lot of knowledge in that crowd, too.”

“And you think you can find wherever they’ve been storing them?” Dean asks intently. “Pull them back out?”

“Castiel banished the angels before they could tidy up here,” Missouri says, shrugging. “It took some doing, but I think I figured out a way back in.”

Mary frowns. What had Cas said about the original spell? Seven angels working in concert and an angelic blood sacrifice? 

She looks at the way the circle’s laid out, does the math, and comes up nowhere she’d like to be. “We are not _sacrificing Cas.”_

“Good Lord, of course not,” Missouri says, appalled. “It’s symbolic - all we’ll do is use some of his Grace. Funnily enough, we don’t actually need as much power as the angels did. It’s a lot harder to find one person in a crowd than it is to yank open a door and let souls make their own way through.”

Well, it’s certainly better than killing him, although Mary’s not wild about making use of that borrowed Grace. She narrows her eyes at Cas, who utterly fails to look in her direction.

“Cas?” Dean says. “You want to weigh in?”

“The spell itself is ingenious,” Cas says, standing up from where he’d been crouched by one of the sigils. “Missouri’s adapted the original structure to use human attributes instead of angelic Grace. It’s very creative. I’d even call it beautiful.”

Missouri dimples at him. “Thanks, honey.”

“As for her theory, it sounds plausible.” He gives Dean a twisted little smile. “I have no direct evidence to support it, but you know as well as I do the lengths that angelic leadership has been prepared to go to achieve their ends.”

“Do we have any idea which hunters we’ll end up with?” Garth asks. “Or how many? There have been a lot of us killed over the years.”

Missouri shakes her head. “We’ll basically be throwing open the door for as long as we can manage it, and whoever shows is who we’ll end up with. The longer we can keep it going the more people we’ll get back, but given that we don’t even know how many are in there…”

Well. That sounds like a recipe for overextending themselves and ending up in a colossal mess. Mary rubs her head.

“Hence the stockpiling,” Jody chips in. “Oh, and we made handouts.” She offers up a stack of yellow copy paper. Mary takes one automatically and glances over it. It’s a list of questions and answers, going all the way from ‘What just happened?’ to ‘Who are these people?’

“I know you wanted to add to our little time-travel club,” Dorothy says in an undertone, eyeing the ‘What’s today’s date?’ entry, “but this might be a little extreme.”

Mary snorts. The ‘Why have you brought me back?’ section takes up half a page and, Mary’s glad to see, covers the angelic and demonic wars and the Croatoan outbreak.

“Well, we do need allies,” Sam says cautiously.

“I don’t like the idea of not having any control over who we end up with,” Dean says, frowning. “Some people deserve - some people will be more useful than others.”

_Like Kevin,_ Mary thinks, but doesn’t say anything. 

“ _I_ don’t like the idea of anyone being held captive,” Garth pipes up. “I think we should do it.”

“Oh my God, I am so in,” Charlie blurts, making Dorothy laugh. “A magic spell and a quest? This is _awesome.”_

Mary sighs. The plan is a little too speculative for her tastes, and she’s worried about the strain it will put on Cas, but Sam and Garth both have good points and she does trust Missouri. “Well, it’s crazy, but it might work. Dean, what do you say?” 

Dean scowls, but nods. “Fine. Angels are dicks anyway. Cas?”

Cas looks up, surprised. “I will help, of course.”

Missouri claps her hands. “Excellent. Jody and I will show you where to stand. Dorothy, honey, you’ll be on guard duty. We don’t know if this’ll attract any nasties, so you’re our protection. You’ll need to put up a salt line.”

Dorothy nods seriously and sets off for the table of weapons. The rest of them begin to shuffle nervously around the circle. Jody taps Mary on the arm and leads her over to a sigil.

“I didn’t know you knew Missouri,” Mary says as they come to a stop next to a sigil that looks like a pear with horns and some kind of growth problem.

“I didn’t,” Jody says cheerfully. “She came and found me. Can’t say it hasn’t been educational, though!”

“Well, it’s good to see you, anyway,” Mary says, smiling.

Jody grins. “Likewise.”

Cas comes to stand next to her while the others are shuffled into place. Mary studies the symbols in front of her and frowns. “You said the angels’ Grace was being swapped out for human attributes, right? Does that mean our symbols are for something in particular?”

“Are we angels of something now?” Charlie asks, nearly vibrating with nerves and anticipation to her right.

Cas frowns. “No, of course not. Regardless of what popular culture and religious tradition says, humans can’t become angels.”

“The symbols, Cas?” Mary reminds him patiently.

“Yes. I apologize,” Cas says. “Are you familiar with the Seven Virtues?”

“Prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity,” Charlie rattles off.

“Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility,” Sam corrects from Charlie’s other side, frowning at her.

“Yes, well, the meanings got a little scrambled when they reached humanity,” Cas sighs. “In their purest form, they’re a little different. And harder to translate.” He nods towards the circle. “You are each standing by the virtue that represents either your strongest attribute or the one you hold most dear. The practice of making angels the guardians of specific things or concepts is similar enough in nature for these attributes to act as a human analogue for Grace.”

“So what do they actually mean?” Mary asks, intrigued. She hates to be critical of her fellow humans, but frankly nobody here is exactly what you would call traditionally virtuous. She’s pretty sure they don’t have a valid candidate for ‘chastity’, for one thing. 

Cas contemplates the circle. “Some are straightforward. Jody and Garth stand for faith and kindness respectively - theirs are probably the simplest.”

Mary nods - both of those make sense given what she knows about the two of them.

“Sam stands for intellect, or as you might know it, diligence. Dean… his is a little more complicated. Justice, technically, but ‘protection’ is probably closer although neither of those completely captures the original meaning.”

That also makes sense, not least because of the complication. Sam frowns thoughtfully in his brother’s direction.

“Mary, you stand for courage, both mental and physical, particularly as it relates to survival. You might also call it strength.”

Well, she did just come back from the dead, which is a pretty survivalist thing to do. She’s not so sure about the ‘courage’ part, though - she’s spent a pretty big chunk of her time scared spitless and wishing it was all over.

“What about me?” Charlie asks. 

“Yours is very difficult to explain,” Cas says, frowning. “You could say that you stand for hope, but in an active rather than a passive sense. You don’t _represent_ hope, you possess it and can use it. You have hope that there is something to be found, be it answers or something else, and you follow that hope.”

“Angel of Curiosity,” Charlie says, satisfied. “Check me out.”

“That’s not really -” Cas starts, and then stops himself with a sigh. “Fine. You can be the angel of curiosity.”

Charlie smiles in triumph and elbows Mary in the side. “How’s it going, Angel of Survival? I’m the Angel of Curiosity.”

Cas puts on his ‘dealing patiently with humans’ face and Mary hides a smile. She wonders if she was the only one who could hear a distinct lack of capital letters when Cas had given in. “So what about Missouri?”

“Temperance,” Cas says, just as Missouri says “Power.” 

Missouri grins. “Two sides of the same coin, really. Cas, baby, we’re about ready for you to take your place.”

“What does Cas’s symbol mean, if we’ve already done all the virtues? Sacrifice?” Mary asks. She really hopes it doesn’t. Even ‘Thursday’ would be better than reducing everything Cas is down to what he can give up for others.

“Um. Yes, absolutely,” Cas says, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Mary glances over at Missouri.

“Love,” Missouri says simply, her smile gentle now. If angels were capable of blushing, Cas would probably be pretty red right now.

“It’s just symbolic,” he mutters, starting for the center. Mary catches his arm.

“Cas, wait.”

He halts obediently, eyebrows raised questioningly. Mary puts her hands on his shoulders and looks him straight in the eye. “There’s somebody in particular I need you to bring back when we do this.”

“I’m not sure how much control I’ll have over -”

“I really, really need you to do this for me, Cas,” Mary interrupts, and even as she’s taking advantage of it she hates the way he immediately raises his chin and steels himself to do his duty. “Whatever it takes, whatever you have to do, even if it means you can’t bring a single other person back, I need this one. Will you promise me?”

“Of course, Mary,” Cas says, concerned. “I swear I will do everything in my power. Who do you need?”

“You,” Mary says, staring him down when he tries to look away. “Bring _yourself_ back, alive and in one piece. Whatever it takes.”

He fidgets, uncomfortable, but he’s already promised. “Very well. I will do my utmost.”

“Good.” She kisses him on the forehead. “Go get ‘em.”

Cas obediently walks out into the center of the circle and stands precisely on his symbol, shoulders squared. Everyone else stills in readiness.

“All right,” Missouri says, and if she’s nervous too it doesn’t show in her voice. “I’ll start the incantation and Cas will take over. You’ll probably be able to feel the power building and drawing from you, but it shouldn’t be painful or debilitating. When the door opens and people begin to come through, there is a possibility that the energy will attract the attention of other spirits in the area. We’re warded and within a salt circle with Dorothy on guard, so don’t let it distract you. They should dissipate once the spell is finished.”

Dorothy, happily armed to the teeth, gives them a reassuring wave from behind Garth.

Mary raises her hand. “How does the spell finish, exactly? Does Cas end it or do you?”

“Ideally, I will,” Missouri says, pinning her with a look that lets her know she’s quite aware of Mary’s real worry. “But any of us breaking the circle - by stepping away, for example - will end it as well. It won’t be as controlled a finish, though, so I’d prefer to avoid it if possible.”

Mary nods, moderately reassured. If she thinks Cas is in danger, at least there will be something she can do.

“Okay, then,” Missouri says, taking a deep breath. “Let’s begin.”

She begins to chant. At first nothing seems to happen, and Mary trades a skeptical look across the circle with Dean, but then she starts to feel… something. A pressure, almost, at the edge of her consciousness, as if someone is staring hard at the back of her head.

Before she can concentrate on that feeling, she notices a slight glow coming from the sigils. It starts out evenly spread over the entire circle, but as Missouri keeps going it coalesces at each of the seven sigils and the one beneath Cas.

The Cas takes over, and it gets really interesting.

As soon as he begins to speak, his gravelly voice giving new weight to each syllable, the light intensifies until she’s blinking away spots. The feeling of being stared at shifts to a weight in her chest, a tugging sensation that seems to pull her towards Cas. Next to her she hears Charlie gasp in surprise and then hush herself.

The tug sharpens suddenly, making her stagger a little, and a shadow appears. It’s too silhouetted against the light for her to pick out individual features, but it’s definitely a person. There’s another tug, and a second shadow appears, and then another and another. She can’t entirely see Cas any more and she has a moment of panic until she finds that she can still catch sight of him if she leans to one side. He’s washed out by the light below him, but she can tell that his eyes are shut tight and his face is screwed up in what she’s hoping is concentration rather than pain.

There’s the loud bang of a shotgun firing, and she jerks back in time to see Dorothy coolly taking aim and firing again. There are shadows outside their circle as well, thrashing and deepening and coming to a knife-sharp stop at the edge of the salt line. There are almost too many of them for Mary to pick out individual characteristics, and the sight of them makes her mouth go dry. Missouri had said the spell would attract spirits, but surely she couldn’t have meant this many. It’s far too many for Dorothy to fight off alone, maybe too many for all of them to fight, and with that much sheer mass it’s only a matter of time before they force their way through the salt line or simply bring the warehouse down around them.

Mary pulls her gun from the waistband of her pants and sees Sam doing the same, but before they can do anything to help Dorothy there’s a sudden swell of light and a _surge_ that leaves her gasping and barely on her feet. It isn’t pain, like Missouri had promised, but it’s intense and all-encompassing and she’s suffocating and it isn’t ending -

Over the roaring sound of the spirits outside the salt line she hears Cas scream something in Enochian, and with a wrench the light is gone and she can breathe. She stumbles, nearly falling, and someone catches her before she can go down completely.

“Steady there,” a male voice says.

Mary gets her feet under her and raises her head. She’s facing a man with a neat beard and a priest’s collar, and beyond him she can see dozens of others. The spirits appear to be gone from beyond the salt line, although Dorothy’s still keeping her eyes on the perimeter. She can see Sam helping a shaky Charlie to her feet, but everyone else is blocked by the crowd.

“Do you know where we are?” the man asks. Mary’s guessing he might be Pastor Jim, but she doesn’t have time to find out. She can’t see Cas at all any more.

“It’s okay, you’re safe. Ask one of the boys, they have handouts,” she says, pointing in Sam’s direction, and starts shouldering her way through the crowd.

It only takes her a moment to get through - fortunately everyone is confused enough to give way easily. She finds Cas lying on his back at the center of the circle, his eyes closed. There’s a woman with dark brown hair kneeling next to him calling his name, and she barely glances up as Mary throws herself down next to them.

“Dammit,” Mary mutters as she feels for his pulse (slow, but steady). “I told him to stop if it got dangerous.”

“Sounds like Cas, all right,” the woman drawls. “I’m Ellen.”

“Mary. They’ve got handouts that explain why you’re here,” Mary offers, but the woman’s not listening. She gasps _”Jo!”_ and sprints into the crowd. 

Cas groans and stirs, almost drowned out by the babble of voices around them. Mary gives his shoulder a shake. “Cas?”

“I’m fine,” Cas says thickly, opening his eyes and blinking dazedly at the ceiling. “Mary?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Mary says, relief and irritation coloring her words. “What the hell did I tell you about going too far?”

Cas squints up at her and pushes himself up onto his elbows. “You didn’t. You said to bring myself back even if I had to leave others behind, which I did.”

Mary buries her face in his hair and exhales shakily. “Okay. Okay, yes, you did. Sorry, I just got worried when you didn’t wake up.”

He pats her awkwardly on the knee, nearly overbalancing and winding up in her lap. “Of course. I apologise as well. Is everyone all right?”

She slips an arm around his back and helps him sit up, watching carefully to make sure he isn’t in danger of passing out again. “I saw Sam, Charlie, and Dorothy before I came to find you, but I haven’t gotten a chance to check on anyone else. How are you feeling?”

He makes a face. “My Grace is depleted and has left me weak. It is less painful now, though.” 

“Well, that’s good,” Mary says. Honestly, she’d prefer for him to have no Grace and no pain. She understands that his Grace comes in handy - the fact that they’re sitting in a crowd of recently resurrected hunters spells that out pretty clearly, thanks - but so far in her experience the cost doesn’t seem worth it.

Someone takes an unwary step and nearly catches her hand under a heel. She hunches protectively over Cas and eyes the crowd - they’re loud and unsettled, but don’t seem to be succumbing to either panic or violence. Not yet, anyway. 

“Can you stand? We should find somewhere else to sit.” She’s nearly drowned out by Jody yelling for everyone to please quiet down and pay attention. After a moment Jody’s voice is backed up by Dean’s, and Mary breathes a sigh of relief. At least both of her boys seem to have made it through all right.

Cas nods and struggles to his feet. Mary slings one of his arms over her shoulder before he can fall over and edges them between a dark-skinned woman hugging a man and sobbing “Isaac, Isaac,” and an older guy with a suspicious glare who mutters “ _Leviathan,”_ as they pass. She heads for the nearest wall, reasoning that it’ll get them out of the confusion a little and, if all else fails, will at least be something for Cas to sit against. On the way she catches sight of Missouri organizing people into lines with relentless efficiency and Garth earnestly handing out water and food, and crosses the last two people off her list of immediate concerns. She can’t see the weapons table, but she thinks she hears Sam arguing with someone named Rufus in that general direction.

“That’s everyone,” she tells Cas. “After we get you sitting down I’ll go grab some water and we can -”

“Why, Dorothy Baum,” a heartbreakingly familiar voice says from just behind them, “I should have expected to find you in the middle of this.”

Mary nearly drops Cas on his butt in her haste to turn around. “ _Mom?”_

It is. It _is_. Mary knows for sure even before Dorothy steps aside and lets her get a clear look. She’s got the same neatly cut blonde hair and she’s wearing that old green shirt and holding open her arms just the way she used to. Mary falls into the embrace, dragging Cas along with her, and her mother even _smells_ right, like lavender and dish soap and cordite.

“Hi, baby,” Deanna says, stroking her hair, and Mary gives up and bawls. She’s vaguely aware of her mother composedly introducing herself to Cas and Cas returning the favor with an embarrassed tone to his voice, probably because Mary’s still holding him up and he’s kind of gotten included in this hug by accident, but she can’t bring herself to care. Of course her parents were hunters and of course it should have occurred to her that one or both of them might come back but she’s put so much effort into getting over their deaths that she just, she honestly _hadn’t_...

Okay. Okay. She has to get herself together. She forces herself to stop crying and lean back, and then seeing her mom’s face brings her most of the way to tears again. 

“I really missed you, Mom.”

Deanna frowns, tucking Mary’s hair behind her ear. “How long has it been? The handout says it’s 2014, but you don’t look old enough.”

Mary laughs, a little hysterically. “Okay, that’s actually a pretty complicated question. Want to help me get Cas sitting down? I can try to explain.”

“I’m fine, really,” Cas says, clearly still embarrassed. He’s also still leaning on her pretty hard, so she ignores him.

Deanna takes his other side until they reach the wall. “Have you seen your father? Is he here too? The last I saw of him he’d been possessed by a demon -”

“He is not here,” Cas says before Mary can answer. “I’m sorry. He ended his life free of possession but he was not one of the souls who passed through the door today.”

Deanna ducks her head, not quite quickly enough for Mary to miss the grief on her face, but it only takes her a moment to recover. Mary can actually pinpoint the moment that she thinks _survival first_ and pushes her feelings aside.

“Well, that’s a blessing, I suppose,” Deanna says. “I’m sorry he’s not here but I’m glad he died at peace.”

He hadn’t. Mary had watched him slump over, bleeding from the gut, dead by the time the demon smoked out. She doesn’t say anything.

“So,” Deanna says, forcing a smile, “You said you’d explain?”

“Okay,” Mary says, abruptly discovering a new sympathy for the lighting fast and incredibly confusing rundown of the thirty years since she’d died that Cas had delivered after they met. “After you died I married John Winchester and had two boys, Dean and Sam, who are around here somewhere. A demon killed me in 1983 as part of a plan to start the Apocalypse, which is a long story all on its own, but the upshot is that I was brought back to life a little while ago as part of a plan to end all of existence which, obviously, we’re now trying to disrupt.”

Deanna stares. “Oh,” she says finally. “Well, I’m not sure I really took all of that in, but… you named your firstborn after me?”

Mary laughs, spotting Dean moving through the crowd with a box of supplies. “Of course I did. Dean! Can you come here for a moment?”

Dean jogs up, looking harassed but relieved to see them. “Hey, you guys okay? What’s wrong with Cas?”

“Dean _Van Halen?”_ Deanna says, goggling.

“Also there was some time travel,” Mary says, wincing. “Cas is okay, Dean, he’s just drained from powering the spell.” She fixes Cas with a sharp look. “He will _tell us_ if something is wrong, isn’t that right?”

“...Yes?” Cas says slowly, and looks relieved when she acknowledges his correct answer.

“Well, Deanna, nice to meet you again,” Dean says. “Cas, glad you’re okay, Mom - let me know if you guys need anything, okay? I have to get back to it.”

“How’s it going?” Mary asks, frowning at his frustrated expression.

“ _You_ try telling fifty-six paranoid hunters that they’ve been resurrected to fight in a supernatural battle against angels and demons,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “It’s going about as well as you could expect, I guess. Fortunately between me and Sam and Missouri we know just about everybody, and everybody we don’t know knows someone we do. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Mary says. “Did… did Kevin come back?”

Dean smiles, and it lights up his face. “Yeah. He’s plenty pissed at us, but his mom came back too, so that’s been a help. Look, I really have to go - any second now Frank’s going to realise Victor’s an FBI agent and then the shit will really hit the fan, crazy conspiracy nut that he is. Sorry, language.” 

“That’s okay, I already know that word,” Deanna says, laughing.

“Tell us if you need help, okay?” Mary adds.

Dean nods and stomps back into the crowd, yelling “Annie, dammit, you can only have two guns! Save some for the other kids!”

Deanna shakes her head, smiling. “So, Castiel, you powered the spell? How’d you draw that duty?”

“The spell required Grace to be successful,” Cas says. When Deanna is not visibly struck by understanding, he explains further. “I am an angel, formerly of the Lord.”

Deanna gives Mary a flat look.

“Also there are angels,” Mary sighs.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They bed down that night in the warehouse, groups of hunters breaking off according to who they know and trust and warding themselves accordingly.

“Team Free Will corner,” Charlie says tiredly, and shepherds Mary, Cas, Sam, Dean, Dorothy, and Deanna into a rough group by the entrance. She tries to corral Kevin as well, but he only glares. 

The first part of the day had been devoted to settling everyone down, inasmuch as such a thing was possible, with the more adaptable of the resurrected hunters pitching in to help with the more disoriented ones. Only one hunter, Frank Devereaux, had refused to have anything to do with them. He’d walked off, looking suspiciously back as he went. Sam and Dean had both rolled their eyes.

Everyone else had stayed, either to help or because they had nowhere else to go. The rest of the day and on into the night had been occupied by giving crash courses in everything from warding against demons and angels to what to expect from modern culture. Missouri, Ellen, and Pastor Jim had moved around in the background, quietly checking to make sure everyone was more or less coping with the day’s bombshells.

Enough hunters had reunited with old friends or lovers that despite the looming battles the general feeling in the warehouse has been mostly positive. Reality will ensue before long, of course, but for now Mary’s grateful for a reprieve. She’s even more grateful for a chance to sleep.

“This is exactly where I first met Cas,” Mary says, too exhausted to put much emotion into the statement. There are still faint marks on the wall where Cas drew the banishing sigil all that time ago. Cas himself is already out cold in a bedroll to one side, although this time he’s sleeping instead of unconscious

“That’s nice,” Charlie says, crawling over to Dorothy and collapsing with her head in Dorothy’s lap. Dorothy doesn’t open her eyes, but she raises one hand to stroke Charlie’s hair.

Sam, who looks marginally more alert than the rest of them, checks Cas’s pulse with a frown. “I’ll take first watch. Are we sure Cas is okay?”

“He says he is,” Mary sighs.

“This is what happened the last time his Grace started to go,” Dean says, lying down with a groan. “I think it counts for normal, as much as anything we do is normal.”

“Sam, I can take first watch,” Deanna says, rubbing his shoulder. “Technically I’ve only existed since noon, so I’ve had a shorter day than the rest of you.”

“Thanks,” Sam says, smiling tiredly. “You can wake me for second.” He curls up with his back to the wall and goes to sleep immediately.

“You too, Mary,” Deanna says. “Go to sleep.”

Mary’s tired and it’s been a long day, so she forgives herself for choking up a little. “Okay, Mom. Good night.”

Tomorrow everything will probably go wrong again, but for now she’s got her boys and her mother and her friends all around her and everyone is safe. Mary goes to sleep smiling and doesn’t even dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so like 95% of this chapter has been plotted out and carefully foreshadowed since I first started writing the story, and the whole plot point of bringing everyone ever back to life operates by meticulously thought-out rules that dictate which characters can come back and which can’t based on their in-universe treatment by the show, and which I stuck to no matter how much I wanted to bring other characters back too (Bobby, Pamela, Jess, and Sarah, I am mostly looking at you.)
> 
> The other 5% was me bringing the Trans back because I’m the author and I can if I want to. Also, for the record, I figured out how to do it way before the show did, and before the show established that Mrs. Tran was, in fact, not dead at all. Whatever, my idea is clearly more awesome. SO THERE.
> 
> (To be fair, I also brought back Tamara and Isaac because they were awesome. Technically Tamara survives 3x01 ‘The Magnificent Seven’, but since she _never appears again_ the writers clearly intended for me to decide that she’d died offscreen at some point in the six intervening seasons and is therefore available to be brought back to life and reunited with her husband. Shut up, it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day and this is about as romantic as I get.)
> 
> Regarding Deanna Campbell in this chapter: she’s never given a maiden name on the show, but since my personal headcanon is that she comes from a hunting family I took her surname from Ezra Moore, the woman who assists Elliot Ness with hunting matters in 7x12 ‘Time After Time’. Mary was born in 1954, so it’s probably a bit of a stretch to say that Deanna was of hunting age in 1935 when Dorothy came to the bunker, but this is apparently the chapter for authorial handwaves. 
> 
> Speaking of which, technically air quotes have been in use since 1927. I thought it was funnier if Mary learned the gesture from Cas, though. FICTION! *jazzhands*
> 
> **ETA:** [Chance Encounters](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chew) illustrated the scene of Mary and Cas in the car! It's right [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1508969), and it's terrific. :D
> 
> **Daughter of ETA:** [tales-at-dusk](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/) did some fantastic sketches of the resurrection spell [here!](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/post/90171773938/i-was-going-to-work-on-my-nightvale-street) Aw, Cas's sheepish little _face_...


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: All of my Oz knowledge comes from Wikipedia, because as a small child I was traumatized by an illustrated version of _The Wizard of Oz_ and have avoided all direct contact with the series since then. Charlie’s horror of the Hammerheads comes straight from me, because the picture of them included in my childhood copy was so excessively creepy that I had to keep the book safely pinned shut under a pile of belongings in the corner of my bedroom until I grew up and left for college. I couldn’t find a copy of that particular illustration to show you, but [these](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Wkf7oQbGaEc/T4JSrHXK1PI/AAAAAAAABLo/LBw9oWxJBGw/s320/5691458802_8e643b06c7.jpg) [two](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F8MvSTzEcvI/T4JSH7e9isI/AAAAAAAABLg/mEUbgJyESE8/s320/10135490.jpg) come close oh God why would you put that in a _children’s book_ I now have to salt and burn my computer.  
>  SPOILERS: 5x10 ‘Abandon All Hope’, 7x17 ‘The Born-Again Identity’, 8x07 ‘A Little Slice of Kevin’, 8x11 ‘LARP and the Real Girl’, 8x20 ‘Pac-Man Fever’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Indian motorcycle parts ca. 1935  
> NEW TAGS: None, surprisingly  
> NOTES: I have now broken 100k words, holy everloving crap. Sorry this chapter took so long!

When Mary wakes the next morning it’s to the hush and dim light of early morning. She opens her eyes to see Cas and Sam sleeping peacefully, Cas curled into a tight ball on top of his bedroll and Sam nearly invisible under his blankets. When she turns her head a little she can see Dean as well, snoring slightly with one hand on the knife under his pillow.

All three are lying still, so at first she assumes that it must have been movement from one of the other groups of hunters that woke her. Then she hears a soft, almost-perfectly stifled sniffle and realises that someone nearby is crying.

She turns her head. Charlie is on watch, sitting cross-legged in a nest of blankets with a shotgun across her knees, and Mary can see a few others in similar positions scattered about the warehouse. Ellen and Jo are moving around near the supplies, but they’re quiet enough that Mary doubts they’re disturbing anybody. Last night Ellen had taken charge of dinner in no uncertain terms, and it looks like she’s claimed breakfast too.

Mary sits up. Charlie glances at her and hastily scrubs her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt.

“Hey,” Mary whispers. “You okay?”

Charlie nods, letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. “Yeah, um, no nasties sneaking up. We’re fine. And I checked on Cas when I started my watch and he seems okay too, for an angel with messed-up Grace or whatever.”

Mary nods, grateful for the update. She reaches over and squeezes Charlie’s shoulder. “Thanks, kiddo.”

Charlie ducks away from the touch. “Please just, just don’t Mom me right now.”

Mary pulls her hand back quickly. “Of course. I’m sorry.” Charlie’s usually pretty open to casual touch - she’d hugged Mary within minutes of meeting her, for crying out loud. It’s a little worrying that she doesn’t want that comfort now.

Mary decides to let Charlie make the next move and they sit for a few minutes in silence, watching Ellen and Jo get things ready for breakfast. From the looks of things Jo is not at all enthusiastic about being pressed into service so early in the morning, but then Ellen kisses the top of her head and Jo rolls her eyes and relents.

“It’s just,” Charlie says abruptly, “with you and Deanna and Ellen and Linda Tran, there are so many moms coming back and I miss mine.”

“She died?” Mary asks softly. That sudden hug when they met makes a lot more sense now.

Charlie nods. “About a year ago. But she’d been in a coma for a long time, so it was really when I was a kid.”

“I’m sorry. I know how rough that can be.”

“Thanks.” She glances over at Mary and gives her a shaky little smile. “I had to - I had to take a moment, you know?”

Mary smiles ruefully. “In a perfect world you’d have all the time you needed.”

Charlie shrugs. “When the quest calls, right? I wouldn’t say I’m exactly happier now, but I’m glad I’m not in the dark any more.” Some of her usual animation starts to return to her expression. “And hey, I got to go to Oz! Who gets to say that?”

Mary laughs a little. Sometimes the crazy lives they lead do have some unexpected perks. See: being raised from the dead for a second chance at life, although arguably if she hadn’t been a hunter she never would have died in the first place. “Did you like Oz?”

This time Charlie’s smile is full and uncomplicated. “Yeah. I mean, not all of it - the Hammerheads are so much creepier in person, you have _no idea_ , and the less said about the flying monkeys the better - but overall it was just incredible. You know it’s actually part of the Fairy Lands? And it turns out I already know a fairy, we met when I was Queen of Moondoor.”

“Aha,” Mary says, as if more than half of that explanation makes sense to her. She’s just glad that Charlie seems to have bounced back a little from her melancholy.

Around them, the others are starting to wake up. Mary turns to look as Sam rolls over and sits up, and his bedhead is so spectacular that Charlie and Mary’s frantically stifled snickering wakes the rest of their little group too.

“Hate you all,” Sam mumbles, resting his forehead on his knees.

“I don’t understand what’s funny,” Cas says, frowning at them. His bedhead’s pretty respectable too, which might be why he’s missing the humor.

“Hate you all except Cas,” Sam amends.

“Aww, it’s okay, we can swing by the beauty parlor later.” Dean reaches out to tousle Sam’s hair and then freezes, expression going blank, as if it’s taken him a moment to remember that he’s lost his brotherly teasing rights with Sam.

Sam eyes him. “Dude, if you want a manicure that bad, just _go.”_ His tone isn’t quite right, but he tries to smile when he says it.

“Har har,” Dean says, looking relieved.

“Mine always gets chipped when I clean my guns,” Deanna sighs, apparently oblivious to the undercurrents. “Dean, they haven’t started making better polish these days, have they?”

Dean stares at her, completely nonplussed, and this time their laughter wakes up the surrounding groups of hunters too.

“Seriously, guys?” Annie moans from where she has her back to the wall and one hand on her gun. Kevin just works one arm out from under his covers and gives them all the finger.

“Kevin Tran, did I just see you use a vulgar gesture?” Linda asks with terrible calm. She’s already awake, composed, and drinking coffee. Mary has no idea where she got coffee from, but it definitely proves she’s a force to be reckoned with.

“Uh, no,” Kevin says slowly. “I was just, um, pointing at the ceiling.”

“I see. I’m glad to hear that,” Linda says in a tone that makes it absolutely clear how much she believes Kevin’s story. She catches Mary’s eye and gives her the universal ‘kids these days’ eyeroll of commiseration. Mary grins.

“Hey guys,” Jo says, coming up and smiling at their antics. “Mom says this isn’t the Roadhouse so if you want food you’re going to have to get off your butts and get it yourself.” She holds out a hand to Charlie. “C’mon, if we hurry we can grab the good stuff before anyone else gets it.”

“Bring me java, I beg of you,” Dorothy groans from where she’s still curled up in her sleeping bag.

Charlie laughs and allows Jo to pull her to her feet. They head off for the food, followed piecemeal by Sam and Deanna. 

Mary lets them go, busying herself with tidying up the bedrolls and sleeping bags. Dean tucks his knife away and helps her, casting the occasional glance over at Cas, who is sitting with his back against the wall.

“Dude, you okay?” He asks finally when everything’s cleared up except Dorothy.

“I think I’m hungry,” Cas says, sounding surprised.

“How’s the Grace situation?” Mary asks, eyeing him. He looks a little dazed, although whether that’s due to having just woken up or something more serious she can’t say. “Any more pain?”

“Pain?” Dean asks sharply.

“The borrowed Grace was hurting him,” Mary explains.

“You never said anything,” Dean says accusingly, glaring at him.

Cas shrugs unapologetically. “It wasn’t relevant. It was merely a situation to be endured.”

Dean’s mouth tightens at this explanation but he doesn’t follow up on it, silently stacking the last few blankets with a little more force than necessary. Cas watches him calmly.

“Hey, Dean?” It’s the FBI agent - Victor, Mary thinks his name was. He gives her and Cas a look and then focuses back on Dean. “Talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure. What’s up?” Dean doesn’t step away from them and after a moment Victor nods and continues.

“Spotted a guy hanging around the perimeter. About 6’ 1”, graying hair and a full beard. Doesn’t seem to be making a move, he’s just watching the warehouse.”

“Kind of old-fashioned looking, maybe wearing a silver pendant?” Mary asks. “Gives you the heebie-jeebies?” Victor nods, giving her a narrow look.

“Cain,” Dean sighs. “Great. Any idea what he wants?”

“He could be spying for Muriel,” Cas says pensively, “but I think it is most likely that he is here in the event that Mary needs assistance as she did in Blue Earth. She must be alive and unharmed for their plan to work.”

Dean straightens, alarmed. “Any chance he’ll try to take us out and grab Mom?”

Mary’s blood runs cold. That hadn’t even occurred to her. Given what Cain had done singlehandedly to a demon army and then a horde of ravening Croats, she’s not sure they’d stand much of a chance even with the addition of the newly resurrected hunters.

But Cas is already shaking his head. “Unlikely. They need Mary’s consent, and in the past your family has proven to react to attempted force with increased resistance rather than acquiescence. Should the rest of us be killed they might try to take advantage of Mary’s despair, but their tactics are based much more on subterfuge and persuasion than outright violence.”

“Oh, good,” Mary says. Cas nods in agreement, oblivious to the sarcasm.

“Sorry, hang on,” Victor says. “But we’re not talking Cain from the _Bible_ , are we? He’s not a thing now?”

“That’s the one,” Dean says absently, mulling over Cas’s analysis.

“ _Jesus,”_ Victor says incredulously.

“No, Christ is unlikely to be involved,” Cas says, frowning. “Cain may already be aware of what we’ve done here, but just in case I would suggest having Mary leave the warehouse first when we all depart. He should follow her and it will be easier to then slip everyone else out without being seen. Have you noticed any other watchers?”

“No,” Victor manages, staring at Cas. “The couple - Tamara and Isaac - they’ve been running patrols as well and they haven’t seen anything either.”

“Check with Rufus, too,” Dean says. “He’s a paranoid bastard, I bet he’s been keeping an eye out. Try not to be seen.”

Victor rolls his eyes. “Oh, are we not supposed to be seen when we try to sneak up on people? I’ll pass that along, thank you.”

Dean makes a face at Victor’s retreating back. “I’m glad we’ve got some backup now, but there’s only so long we’re going to be able to keep this many hunters all on top of each other with nothing to do. We need to get people out into the field before somebody snaps.”

“Can somebody grab this coffee before I drop it?” Charlie asks plaintively as she approaches. Sam, Deanna, and Missouri are right behind her, each laden down with several plates of food. Sam, Mary is amused to see, also has two camp chairs under his arm which he solicitously sets up for Deanna and Missouri. 

Dean grabs the coffee from her just as it starts to tip, hissing as some of it spills over his fingers. He nudges Dorothy with the toe of his boot until she sits up and reaches for it, mumbling incoherently.

“How did you manage in Oz without any coffee?” Mary asks curiously, accepting a plate of food from Deanna.

“Didn’t,” Dorothy mumbles. “Plenty of coffee. _Stronger_ coffee,” she adds, taking a sip and grimacing.

Sam laughs and passes a plate of food to Cas, who looks surprised by the gesture but tucks in without hesitation. “Maybe it was magic coffee.” He seems to be in a good mood this morning, even given the strained teasing he’d woken up to. Mary’s glad to see it.

“Charlie, what’s wrong?” Missouri asks. Mary glances over - Charlie’s food is sitting untouched next to her, and her fingers are white-tipped where she’s clutching her tablet. She’s gone pale. Mary glances over at Missouri for help, but Missouri’s totally focused on Charlie.

“Well,” Charlie says shakily, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I know where we can send some hunters. The bad news is that two more Croatoan reports just came in.”

“Two more towns?” Mary asks, foreboding sitting heavily in her chest. They’ve got the numbers to help contain it now, but two more towns means that many more people who are dead or worse. Plus, Cas was right the other day - sooner or later people are going to start to panic, the _government_ is going to start to panic, and they’ll have to come up with some way to deal with that as well.

“One town,” Charlie says reluctantly, “and one city. Boston.”

They stare at her, speechless. A town or two, stranded out in the middle of farmland, seems abruptly easy to deal with in comparison to a major city. Boston has suburbs. A port. All it takes is one infected person on a train or a boat or a bus or, hell, public transit, and the virus is out and unchecked.

“It’s mostly just in Back Bay at the moment,” Charlie says, not taking her eyes off the tablet, “but I don’t think we can count on that for long.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Deanna protests. Mary startles a little. “Croatoan is a virus, right? That’s what you said yesterday. This isn’t how disease spreads. The first two towns were in the Midwest, how would it jump all the way to the coast without any sign in between?”

“It isn’t a normal disease,” Dean says grimly. “It’s a weapon. If it’s in Boston it’s because someone put it there.”

“It’s a fairly brilliant move, tactically,” Cas says thoughtfully, and Mary blinks at his clinical tone. She can’t stop thinking about all the people, all the places this virus is going to devastate, and for Cas to reduce it so quickly to a matter of strategy leaves her floundering. She’s always known he’s a soldier by training, but an affinity for hand-to-hand combat and an ability to strategize is a long way from being so clearly accustomed to coping with death in large numbers.

“When the infected succumb to the virus and begin killing others, they still possess their souls,” Cas continues, “and the souls of murderers are destined for Hell. In one move she’s crippling her human opponents, shoring up her own power in Hell, and removing potential vessels from the angels. The faster it spreads, the more powerful she becomes.”

“‘She’?” Dorothy says, leaning forward. “You think it’s Abaddon?” She seems just as detached as Cas, and Mary wonders for the first time how much of _The Wizard of Oz_ is true and how much of it was an allegory for something a lot bigger and scarier. Dorothy had willingly locked herself in a bottle for seventy years just to take out a single opponent, after all. That’s not the kind of tactic that gets played on a whim. 

“It’s not Crowley’s style,” Sam agrees. He, at least, looks shaken by Charlie’s news, even if he’s setting it aside and trying to contribute to the conversation. “I may hate him, but he’s a businessman. All out destruction is Abaddon’s thing, not his.”

“Besides, as a Knight of Hell Abaddon is old enough and highly-ranked enough to have knowledge of and access to the Croatoan virus,” Cas points out. “It also explains the near-disaster yesterday morning.”

Dean’s eyes narrow. “In Blue Earth we let the authorities handle the problem and we did the same thing yesterday. You think she was watching?” At Cas’s nod he scowls. “No wonder the surprise flamethrower was what worked.”

“So what do we do about it?” Mary asks, struggling to catch up. “Is there a cure we can work on?”

Cas shakes his head. “No. The virus has been used by various parties over time, but at its base it’s still a tool of the horseman Pestilence. It’s not a human disease and it won’t be treated by human means. It’s not even really an instrument of Heaven or Hell.”

“Well, if this is a move against more than just us, can we count on the other groups for help at all?” Deanna asks. From the look on her face she’s understood maybe half of the conversation, but it’s still a good question.

“Doubt it,” Dean says heavily. “They don’t think much of us. We have the numbers now to be taken seriously, though, and it might be our only play... Cas, which of the angels do you think is our best bet?”

“I’m not sanguine about any of them,” Cas says. “Bartholomew thinks of humanity as inferior, Malachi barely thinks of them at all, and Muriel wants to end existence entirely. It’s hardly encouraging.” He shifts uncomfortably. “Being known allies of mine won’t help you much, either.”

“Which leaves us with Crowley,” Dorothy says.

“No,” Sam says immediately.

“You got another choice?” Dean asks. “At least we know Crowley makes deals. He’s got enough self-interest to team up with us, at least in the short term.”

“Deals don’t tend to work out too well for us,” Sam says, his light tone undercut by his stony expression.

“Alive to complain about it, aren’t you?” Dean shoots back, and then flinches.

“All right,” Mary says, before Sam can do more than open his mouth. “We talk to Crowley, and we might as well try talking to the angels too. We already know there are factions there - maybe even if the leaders don’t like us some of the individual angels will.”

Sam scowls, but holds his tongue.

“We can talk to Bartholomew and Malachi,” Cas says hesitantly, looking doubtful, “although I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Muriel’s only desire is for Mary’s consent, and we can’t bargain with that.”

“So, three teams of negotiators,” Dorothy says. When they look confused, she huffs impatiently. “Come on, you never send all of your leadership to the same place. I’ve led a rebellion, that’s just asking for a double-cross and an ambush. We send some to Crowley and some to each of the angels, and the rest stay in the bunker and monitor the situation.”

“Well, I’m the obvious choice for monitoring,” Charlie offers. “I mean, as much as I’m up for queenly negotiating and all that, the bunker’s probably where I’ll be of the most use.”

“I’ll go with you,” Deanna says. She shrugs self-deprecatingly at their surprised looks. “I’m a good hunter, but I’ve been retired for a while and I’m out of my time. I’d be a liability. I’m better off playing guard.”

“Okay,” Dean says. “Me and Sam will take Crowley, since we’ve dealt with him before. Cas, even if the angels hate you, you’re our best bet for negotiating with them. You want Bartholomew or Malachi? Missouri, you feel up for taking the other?”

“I’ve got something else I need to chase down, I’m afraid,” Missouri says, frowning over the edge of her coffee cup. “I’m going to have to pass.”

“Okay,” Dean says, and from the grimly amused look on Missouri’s face Mary’s not the only one who knows that Dean is thinking _freaking cryptic psychics_ right now.

“I will need to visit both Bartholomew and Malachi, anyway,” Cas sighs. “Danger or not, they’ll interpret different delegations as an affront or a sign of favoritism, depending.”

“Would it be helpful if I came too?” Mary offers. “Malachi at least knows that Muriel’s interested in me. If they know what her plan is, do you think they’ll be more willing to help us avoid it?”

Cas tilts his head thoughtfully. “They might. We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“We can’t send the two of you alone,” Sam says firmly. 

“You can’t go alone either,” Mary shoots back. “You need backup too. Who do you want?”

“Mrs. Tran,” Sam and Dean say simultaneously, and then look embarrassed.

“We can’t ask it of her, though,” Sam says. “Or Kevin. Even if she’s a good negotiator.”

“Especially not for something involving us _and_ Crowley,” Dean says, shoulders hunched.

“Kevin should go back to the bunker, anyway,” Cas points out. “You still have all of his notes from when he was working on the angel tablet, don’t you? A counter to Metatron’s spell would be a powerful bargaining tool.”

Sam frowns, but Dean cuts in before he can say anything. “Yeah. Good plan. We’ll send them with Charlie and Deanna.”

Cas nods, satisfied. Sam gives his brother a long, considering look and doesn’t say anything.

“All right.” Dean claps his hands. “Missouri, you want to go with me to ask for volunteers? I think Victor will be of the most use in Boston, since he has actual experience with urban crowd control, but everybody else gets a choice. You got any requests for your backup, Mom? Cas?”

Mary shakes her head - most of the hunters here she doesn’t know very well, except Jody, and since Jody still has a job to get back to it seems selfish to ask for her time. In any case, asking for volunteers instead of making an order is the best way to deal with hunters. They tend naturally towards solitude and independence, and most of them are probably feeling unsettled enough without suddenly being drafted into an army. 

Cas shakes his head too, and then pauses. “If Ellen and Jo are willing, I would welcome their presence,” he says, a little stiffly.

Sam looks amused. “Okay, but no more drinking contests.”

Mary raises her eyebrow. Drinking contests? She wouldn’t have pegged Cas as the type.

“I still don’t understand what the purpose of that was,” Cas sighs.

Ah.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

With Dean and Missouri’s call for volunteers, the overall mood in the warehouse shifts abruptly from wary anticipation into focused determination. The hunters might not entirely understand or trust their current circumstances, but hunting is hunting and a fight is a fight. Victor agrees to handle Boston and gathers a group of others for backup (including Garth, which makes Sam laugh for nearly five minutes when he finds out), and after withdrawing to discuss the matter Ellen and Jo say they’ll accompany Mary and Cas when they go negotiate with the angels.

Rufus, a hunter Mary isn’t very familiar with, offers to go with Dean and Sam when they talk with Crowley but is beaten to the punch by Pastor Jim and Caleb. For a moment it looks like it might turn into a fight, but then Missouri casually name-drops the Men of Letters and mentions that the bunker’s archives will need protection too. Rufus immediately switches sides, a speculative gleam in his eye.

The Trans hear Dean and Sam out in resigned silence, and then Kevin crosses his arms and says “Well, I guess the bunker’s about as safe as anywhere.” From his tone, he doesn’t mean it as a compliment.

For her part, Mary mostly just tries to be helpful. While Dean and Missouri are sorting out staffing issues she helps Ellen, Jo, and Sam pack away the food and supplies. A good chunk of the hunters will be staying behind for another day before splitting up and distributing themselves geographically, so most everything will stay behind. Still, it’s good to tidy it up.

Mary watches Dean and Missouri work, waiting for her moment. She’s desperately curious about Missouri’s comment during the strategy session - if Missouri’s last hunch led to resurrecting more than fifty dead hunters, she really wants to know what the next one will bring. 

Missouri picks up on it, of course, so as soon as she’s done talking with Tamara and Isaac she comes and loiters nearby until Mary can slip away.

“So,” Mary says casually. “You planning to check out a new lead?”

She doesn’t begrudge Missouri for keeping the resurrection plan close to her chest, since it was a long shot and would have sounded pretty far-fetched to everyone except maybe Cas. Still, she does like being informed.

Missouri sighs. “No, unfortunately. Did you get a chance to look around while the spell was going?”

“I saw the spirits, if that’s what you mean,” Mary says cautiously.

“There were too many of them,” Missouri says pensively. “ _Way_ too many. I don’t know why yet, but it makes me nervous.” She gives Mary a sideways glance. “I only wasn’t going to mention it because it seemed to me that there was quite enough going on already.”

Her voice is dry, and Mary laughs a little. “Well, you’re not wrong. Thanks for telling me anyway.”

“You seem a little more settled than the last time I saw you,” Missouri says, which is a nice way to step around Mary’s crying jag on Missouri’s kitchen floor.

Mary shrugs. “I think I’ve hit my threshhold. Or I’ve plateaued, or something. As long as Sam and Dean are okay, I can cope.”

Missouri doesn’t look entirely reassured by this, which is understandable. Mary’s not reassured by it either. She’d like to think she’s better off than Dean, so wrapped up in his brother, but she’s probably not, even with Cas and her mother in the picture as well.

They fall silent for a moment, and Mary finds herself automatically checking the crowd for her boys. Sam has finished helping Ellen and Jo pack the supplies, and he’s deep in conversation with Pastor Jim. From the incredulous look on Jim’s face and the way they keep glancing over at Cas, Mary’s guessing that Jim just caught on to the presence of an actual angel in their midst. She doesn’t blame him for looking skeptical - maybe it’s the air of vague bewilderment or the terrible posture, but even with his car t-shirt on under his white button-down Cas looks more like an out-of-his-depth accountant than a warrior of God.

Dean is standing a few feet away from him, talking to a group of hunters. Mary’s too far away to hear more than snatches of the conversation, but she thinks he’s sorting out who should go where once the bulk of the unofficial hunter army mobilises tomorrow. Charlie’s at his elbow with her tablet, apparently to provide geographical pointers, and every few minutes Dorothy patiently takes her by the shoulders and guides her out of the way of someone bustling by on a different mission.

“Your boy’s really got a knack for this,” Missouri says, watching Dean mollify the more fractious members of the hunter group while encouraging the quieter ones.

“He does,” Mary agrees, but her enthusiasm is dimmed a little when she catches sight of Deanna across the warehouse. In the general bustle of the room Deanna’s standing alone, and she’s watching the crowd with a lost, aching expression on her face. Mary frowns in concern, but the crowd shifts between them and by the time it clears Deanna’s in conversation with Jody, looking animated again. 

It’s worrying, but Mary supposes it’s also to be expected. Getting surprise grandsons is hardly going to balance out the loss of someone Deanna had loved for more than thirty years, no matter how good she is at putting survival first. 

Still. Deanna will be coming to the bunker with them, and that’s good. She’ll be surrounded by people, some of whom she already knows and some of whom are entirely new, and Deanna’s always loved meeting new people. Plus, as Mary’s had the opportunity to discover, averting the end of the world is a great way to put your problems aside and focus on something else for a while. They’ll be okay, she’ll just be sure to keep an eye out. Everything will be fine.

Missouri raises an eyebrow at her.

“What?” Mary says defensively. “We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t forget that you can have others help out, Mary,” Missouri says. “You don’t actually have to carry everyone by yourself.”

“No, I know,” Mary says. Knowing and doing are two different things, of course, but she can work on that.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Missouri mutters, rolling her eyes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They set out a few hours later, after considerable debate regarding the order of departure and who gets to ride in which car. In the end Mary and Cas leave first, since Cain will be following them, with Ellen and Jo as their passengers since they’ll be travelling together to meet with the angels and it’s only a matter of time before Cain picks up on it anyway. Dean and Sam will follow with Charlie and Rufus, as Charlie’s glued to her tablet and will have a harder time using it in the sidecar.

Since the Trans have elected to find their own way, that leaves Dorothy and Deanna and a motorcycle. Dorothy flashes Deanna a daring smile and says “Do you want to ride, or do you want to drive?”

Deanna grins back. “Please, I’m driving. You promised me when I was fourteen.”

Mary doesn’t see Cain as they leave the warehouse, and for the time being it’s probably best not to let on that they know he’s there so she makes a conscious effort not to look around. She feels like she’s stiff and obvious about it while Cas, Ellen and Jo all look completely natural, but once they get in the car Jo complains “Man, he’s staring at us and it’s making the back of my neck itch. I hate this.”

“Better staring than shooting,” Ellen says easily, which is true enough.

“I wonder how he’ll follow,” Jo muses. “Does he have a car?”

“He had a truck in Missouri,” Mary says thoughtfully, “but when we ran into him in Blue Earth I think he was teleporting. Could go either way, I guess, depending on what he feels like.”

She pulls out onto the main road, heading towards the bunker. It should only be about an hour or so until they get there, depending on what happens along the way. They won’t be staying long once they arrive, but she’s looking forward to a shower and a chance to repack before they have to hit the road again. She wants to check in with Dean, too - with the acceleration of the Croatoan virus, he’s got to be thinking about that trip to the future he took. He doesn’t look shaken on the outside, but Mary can’t get the memory of him nearly losing it in Blue Earth out of her mind.

“Castiel.” Ellen says in a tone that makes even Mary want to stop slouching and tuck in her shirt. In the rearview mirror she sees Jo twitch. “This is not the kind of thing Bobby would have missed.”

Jo stills, glancing between Cas and her mother. Mary frantically runs through the people she’s heard Cas or Dean or Sam mention and finally remembers Jody talking about a Bobby. He’d looked out for the boys, she’d said. And hadn’t Cas mentioned him during that ghost thing in Philadelphia?

“No,” Cas says, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “He wouldn’t.”

Ellen breathes in sharply and looks down at her lap, clenching her hands. After a moment she raises her head, composed. “Well, I hope he didn’t do something stupid,” she says roughly.

“He didn’t,” Cas says. “It was heroic.”

“Damn fool,” Ellen mutters. “I guess that’s something, then.”

Mary glances into the rearview mirror again. Cas’s face is expressionless, but he’s pulled in on himself a little. Whatever happened to Bobby, he doesn’t like thinking about it. Next to him, Jo reaches forward and squeezes her mother’s shoulder.

The rest of the drive is mostly silent. Ellen asks a few questions about where they’re headed, and Jo asks about the possibility of picking up more weapons once they reach the bunker, but for the most part everyone seems content to sit quietly. After the bustle and tension of the warehouse, a little bit of peace is a welcome relief.

Mary beelines for the shower once they’re inside, leaving Dean and Sam and Cas to explain the bunker to the newcomers. She takes a little longer than she probably should, given how many people are now going to be using the bunker’s facilities, but in her defence the bunker’s never run out of hot water yet and the water pressure is _amazing_.

Sure enough, Sam’s waiting for her when she gets back to her room. He laughs a little at her blissed-out expression. 

“Nothing quite like a good shower, is there?”

“Especially _this_ shower!” Mary agrees. “What’s on your mind, kiddo? You worried about talking to Crowley?”

Sam makes a face. “Not really. I mean, I’m not looking forward to it, but we’ve dealt with Crowley before. Sometimes he hasn’t even screwed us over,” he adds dryly.

“Oh, well, in that case it sounds like a party.” She sits down on the end of her bed, and Sam takes her cue and leans up against the dresser. “Does going with Dean worry you at all?”

Sam sighs. “If you’re asking if I’ve forgiven him yet, the answer’s no. Not really. I mean, I think I understand a little better why he did it, but I’m still pissed and I still think he was wrong.”

“Would you rather go with someone else?” Mary asks. She could switch places with either of them, if need be - Crowley knows her, so her presence wouldn’t be completely weird. Cas could probably handle the Muriel aspect of the negotiation without her, and while she suspects that Sam might be a better fit for the angel delegation, either he or Dean would be able to handle it.

Sam hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. I mean, it’s kind of tempting, but we can’t keep splitting up forever. He’s just…” he gestures helplessly. “He screwed up, I spend half my time wanting to punch him, but at the same time... maybe it’s because you came back, but I can’t stop thinking about him when we were kids. You know I broke my arm once and he rode me to the emergency room on his handlebars? And he was the one who taught me to tie my shoes, and who made sure we had Christmas, and I just…” he buries his face in his hands for a moment, fingers clenching in his hair, and then straightens again. “I miss my brother, but I still don’t know if I can stop being angry. I guess I just have to try. See what happens.”

Mary nods slowly. It’s hardly a glowing recommendation, but she can understand how confused Sam must be feeling right now. A willingness to try to get along with Dean is still a pretty good step. “I understand, sweetheart. You know I’m here if you ever want someone to talk to? Or to vent, that works too.”

Sam snorts. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He stands up suddenly, shaking off the previous topic of conversation physically as well as verbally. “So, how about you? Are you worried about talking to the angels?”

Mary sighs. “Yeah. Only a little, because I’m mostly trying not to think about it, but the last time we saw Malachi he did try to torture us. And I’m worried about Cas, with the memory stuff.”

“Yeah.” Sam scrubs a hand through his hair. “Look, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. You know the spell Metatron used? The one in the angel tablet?”

“The one Cas wants Kevin to translate?” Mary asks. 

“Thing is, he already did. And there’s no way to break it.”

Mary leans back, frowning. She’s never thought that much about the spell, because what’s done is done and they have enough other problems to be going on with, but she knows Cas feels responsible for it. “You haven’t told him?”

“I wanted to. Dean refused.” Sam grimaces. “There was a while ago, Cas did some really awful things to the angels - and it was his fault, but it also kind of wasn’t? It was complicated. Anyway, for that and, and for other reasons he went a little crazy for a while. I think Dean’s worried that telling him will kick that off again.”

“And you don’t think it will?” Mary asks. She’s only known Cas for a little while, but she feels like she understands him pretty well. He doesn’t seem like the type to break from something like this, at least not when there are others depending on him and there’s so much else that needs to be done.

Then again, she’s aware that she doesn’t have all the context.

Sam shakes his head. “I think it’ll upset him, and he’s been known to do some pretty extreme things to punish himself, but I think he’s stronger than Dean thinks. There was a lot of other stuff going on before that isn’t in play this time. Of course,” he adds, giving her a sardonic look, “I’m also just not a huge fan of secrets any more. Anyway, I thought you should know. Sooner or later he’s going to find out, no matter what Dean wants.”

Mary nods. That does seem to be the way their lives go. “Thanks for warning me, sweetheart. You’re a good friend.”

Sam blushes a little. “Oh. Well. You know.”

Mary smiles, taking pity on him. “All right, I’m going to go check on your grandma. You better steal the shower before someone else takes it.”

“I’m not getting between Jo and her shower,” Sam says, appropriately horrified.

Mary finds Deanna in the kitchen. She’s standing in the center of the room, looking around with a slightly stunned expression on her face, but she smiles when she sees Mary.

“This place hasn’t changed a bit.”

“That’s more or less what Dorothy said,” Mary says. “I gather we have you to thank for the scorch marks in the garage?”

Deanna laughs. “Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten that. We got in so much trouble.”

Mary steps up next to her and bumps her shoulder. “How are you doing, Mom?”

“Oh, well,” Deanna says. “It’s been a bit of a shock, I won’t lie, but I’m fine, sweetheart. Nothing to worry about.”

“You sure?” Mary says, eyeing her. 

“I’m sure. It will be good to have something to do.” She pushes up her sleeves and bustles over to the sink, unearthing cleaning supplies as she goes. “Now, what’s your plan for the next few days, honey?”

Mary recognizes the move for the deflection it is, but lets it slide. “We’re going to head out this afternoon. Dean and Dorothy and Cas are looking at all the recent angelic activity and trying to figure out where we’ll have the best chance of finding Bartholomew and Malachi, and then we’re going to drive there and Cas is going to try and arrange a meeting. After that it all depends on the angels.”

Deanna shakes her head. “ _Angels._ They’re actually angels? It’s not a horrible nickname?”

“Actually angels,” Mary says regretfully. “Sorry about that.”

Deanna sighs, scrubbing hard at the countertop. “Well. That’s something of a disappointment.”

Mary winces. “Sorry.”

Deanna levels a look at her. “I’m reasonably certain it’s not your fault, Mary.”

Mary shrugs. “No, but still… I know it’s a pretty crappy world to be brought back to.”

“No use whining about it,” Deanna says briskly. “Now, what was all that commotion about a tablet earlier?”

Mary lets her direct the conversation again, and relates what she knows of the various tablets, angel and otherwise. By the time she’s done outlining the little bit she’s learned about the trials to close Heaven and Hell, Deanna has cleaned all the counters and started inspecting the dishes for signs of improper washing. Mary has a feeling that by the time she gets back from talking with the angels the entire bunker will be aggressively spotless, and she feels just a tiny bit of sympathy for everyone who’s going to be staying behind.

“All right,” Deanna says, hand on her hips. “Go ask Dean where the mop is. I can’t be bothered to search this entire bunker.”

Mary’s been wanting to check in with Dean anyway, so she obeys promptly. She finds Dean in the library with Dorothy and Rufus, which gives her an idea. Missouri had said to enlist help, right? Well, Dorothy is an obvious choice, since she’s already friends with Deanna and can certainly understand the disconnect of travelling through time. Rufus she doesn’t know too well, but he seems nice enough and he’s old enough to remember a lot of the things Deanna will find familiar. Hopefully, between the two of them they’ll be able to give Deanna a bit of security.

Mary waits patiently until they finish up what they’re talking about (the history of the bunker, it sounds like) and then butts in. “Dean, do you have a mop? Mom- uh, Deanna wants to know.”

“Um.” Dean considers this. “I think there’s one in the hall closet by the bathrooms.” 

“Great!” Mary beckons to Dorothy and Rufus. “You two, I need a favor. Will you keep an eye on my Mom while I’m gone? I’m worried about how much of a shock being dropped into 2014 will be.” 

Dorothy agrees immediately and goes to bring Deanna news of the mop. Rufus eyes her closely. “Your family was the Campbells, weren’t they?”

Mary blinks, then remembers Rufus’s interest in the bunker’s historical records. “Yeah, but my mother’s maiden name is Moore.”

Rufus smiles in satisfaction. “I knew a Moore. Good hunter.” And that seems to be that - he turns and wanders off.

Mary raises an eyebrow at Dean, who rolls his eyes. “He’s what you’d call ‘an eccentric’.”

“Aha. Well, that should be exciting.”

Dean laughs a little. “Yeah, probably. You all set for your trip?”

“Pretty much.” She wanders over to stand next to him, smoothing down the hair on the back of his head. “How are you feeling about all this?”

Dean drops his head a little. “I’m fine.”

“Uh huh.”

He pulls away. “I’m not going to freeze up again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Mary keeps her voice calm and even. “I’m not worried about your professionalism, kiddo. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Dean glances back at her, caught between putting up a front and accepting what she’s offering. Finally he turns away, fiddling with some of the books on a nearby shelf. “I’m fine,” he repeats, a little quieter. “It’s not… there are enough things that are different, this time around, that I’m not really… I guess it makes sense that Zachariah was just creating that other future. I don’t like that he got so much right, but… Chuck didn’t come back yesterday, and he was definitely there before. Bobby had been shot in his wheelchair, and he’s been out of the chair and then dead for years now. We’ve got Croatoan to handle and the angels weren’t in Heaven, but they weren’t on the ground, either. And there’s been no sign of Lucifer. I’m in charge of a bunch of people, but the town that was overrun this morning by the virus? Camp Chitaqua? That’s where our base was the first time.” He hunches forward until his forehead is pressed against the library shelf. “I don’t know, Mom. There are too many variables.”

Mary takes a chance and puts her hand on his back. He doesn’t shrug her off this time, turning towards her instead. She pulls him into a hug. “You want a little advice?”

He rests his chin on her shoulder. “Okay.”

“Stop worrying about it,” she says, rubbing his back to take the sting out of the words. “You can’t predict the future, sweetheart. You’ll go crazy trying. We’ve got enough to be crazy about.”

Dean gives a long, shuddering sigh. “I guess.” He clings a little tighter. “This is so big, Mom. It’s been big before, but…”

“I know. I know.” She kisses him on the cheek and he loosens his hold a little. His head’s still bent, but she thinks it’s tiredness rather than him trying to hide from her. “One thing at a time, okay? We can handle one thing at a time. And there are a lot of us now, so that’s a lot of things being handled one thing at a time.” 

“Yeah, I guess.”

A noise at the doorway makes Dean pull away from her a little bit. It’s Sam, leaning against the doorjamb. Mary wonders how long he’s been there.

Dean coughs, embarrassed. “So. Sasquatch. You got anything to add?”

Sam shrugs. “Well, this is the family business, right? I guess that means we can handle it.”

A ghost of a smile crosses Dean’s face. “You’re such a girl.”

“Are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” Mary asks sweetly.

A very clear _oops_ expression crosses Dean’s face. Sam snickers. “Uh. No, of course not.”

“Good.” She gives his back one final rub. “All right, I’m going to round up my troops. You got a location for us?”

Dean nods. “Charlie’s going to text it to you.”

“Great.” She pauses in the doorway to hug Sam. “You boys watch out for each other, do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Of course, Mom.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Mary says, smiling. “Okay. Happy negotiating. Call me if you run into trouble.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They leave the bunker half an hour later, Mary and Ellen in the front and Cas and Jo in the back. Ellen’s got a road map spread out over her lap and she’s bickering good-naturedly with Jo about navigating via map versus navigating via GPS. Cas is watching the whole exchange with a perplexed expression, but when she catches his eye in the rearview mirror he smiles at her.

Family business, huh? 

Okay, then. They can do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to take a moment to thank everybody who reads and kudos and comments on this story. Not only is it the longest thing I’ve ever written _by far_ , it’s also the first time I’ve ever written a WIP. It’s not an exaggeration to say that knowing you guys are reading is what keeps me writing. Also holy crap you all have some great ideas! :)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Brief discussion of facing past abusers. Some fairly defeatist religious talk, in line with canon. Another brief discussion of a child dying before a parent.  
> SPOILERS: 5x10 ‘Abandon All Hope’, 5x18 ‘Point of no Return’, 9x06 ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’, 9x09 ‘Holy Terror’, 9x14 ‘Captives’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Driving routes! (it’s been so long…) Coal mining in Kentucky. Enochian angel names.  
> NEW TAGS: Bartholomew, original characters  
> NOTES: [Bluesy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chew) illustrated the scene of Mary and Cas in the car from Chapter 13! It's right [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1508969), and it's terrific. :D

Before they’d left the bunker Dean, Cas, and Charlie had convened over the map table and narrowed Bartholomew’s location down to somewhere in southern Wisconsin, so Mary heads in that direction. All they really need is to wind up in the general vicinity, because Cas is planning to pray to Bartholomew and set up a meeting that way, but Charlie seems determined to narrow it down as far as possible. After the second text, Mary just hands her phone over to Ellen and concentrates on driving.

They’ve made it as far as the Nebraska-Iowa border when Charlie hits paydirt.

“Mt. Horeb,” Ellen reads aloud, and turns her attention to the map. “About twenty minutes outside of Madison, it looks like.”

In the backseat, Cas sighs and mutters “Predictable.” He’s been mostly quiet so far, content to look out the window and nod occasionally when Jo tells him something. Jo, for her part, has pretty much given up trying to engage him in conversation.

“What do you mean, Cas?” Ellen asks, already tracing out their route on the road map.

“It’s another name for Mt. Sinai, which in human mythology is where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. Bartholomew has always been a traditionalist.” From Cas’s tone, he doesn’t mean it as a compliment.

“‘Human mythology’,” Ellen murmurs, giving Mary an incredulous look.

“So Bartholomew thinks he’s going to receive the word of God?” Jo asks.

“Not receive,” Cas says disgustedly. “He’s proven to be very adept at using the devout for his own ends.”

“Wow,” Jo says, drawing the word out. “He’s an angel, is he supposed to be that arrogant?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Cas takes it seriously.

“Angels were created by God to be without free will,” he says, turning away from the window to face her fully, “so the real question is: did God create us to be as we are now, or have we strayed from our original purpose? If God is all-knowing and His plan is predestined, then it shouldn’t be possible for us to be anything other than what He created us as, and in that case, why does He want us to war with each other? If it’s that only some of us are doing as He intended, which of us are in the right and which of us will be punished for our transgressions? And if God is fallible and our purpose flawed, is our existence then an abomination? When angels die we cease to exist - there is no Heaven or Hell for us, because we have no souls. If God doesn’t care, does what we do ultimately matter at all?”

By the time he’s finished talking, Ellen has abandoned the map to stare at him and even Mary has slowed the car to a stop so that she can turn and see his face. She’d considered the mess the angelic factions were causing, of course, but she had never really stopped to think about the depth of the existential crisis the angels must be facing. She’s astonished that any of them are even functional.

“No wonder they’re falling apart,” Ellen murmurs, clearly on the same page.

“So what do you think, Cas?” Mary asks, twisting further around in her seat. She really has to wonder how long he’s been carrying this, and if anyone’s ever asked him about it before. It had certainly never occurred to _her_.

Cas looks down. “God has left,” he says flatly. “Whatever design He may have had has long since crumbled, and the structures He made - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Earth - are beginning to fail as well.”

Mary frowns, worry twisting in her gut. “So you agree with Muriel? That everything should just be wiped out?”

“No.” Cas looks up again, surprised. “Of course not. Don’t you see how much is left? All the life? God’s hand may no longer be upon us, but the beauty, the wonder - I have seen much of this world, as both an angel and a human. I have seen terrible, brutish acts and I have seen grace and divinity to rival anything in Heaven. God may have begun creation, but humans continue it. You are human, so perhaps you can’t see how incredible it is, but with everything you do - every building and poem and friendship... no one tells you to do it. No one requires it of you or shows you how it must be done.” He gestures helplessly, unable to put it into words. “If there is to be a fight, then I fight for humanity. Always.”

He blinks as Mary leans back between the seats and kisses him on the forehead. “What was that for?”

“Just, I’m glad that you’re you, Cas,” Mary says.

“Oh,” Cas says, surprised.

“Hell, _I’m_ on Team Cas,” Jo says, settling back in her seat. “That was a pretty good speech, hotshot.”

Cas clears his throat, discomfited, and Ellen grins and takes pity on him, unfolding the map again with a snap. “Don’t sweat it, kiddo - that’s a good thing. All right, since we’re stopped we might as well look at the route. I figure it’ll be another seven hours until we make Mt. Horeb, and we should probably stop beforehand. Shouldn’t be dark for another six hours or so, which would put us -”

“Riverside,” Mary interrupts, looking over her shoulder. “We should stop in Riverside.”

Ellen raises her eyebrows, locating the town on the map. “Yeah, sure, that’s on the way. You know someone there?”

“Not yet,” Mary says, starting up the car again. “It’s the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk and I want to take a picture for Dean. I hear they have a marker.”

Jo dissolves into snickers in the backseat. Ellen smiles wolfishly. “You know, I bet Cas hasn’t had a real tourist experience yet. We should take _lots_ of pictures.” From the look she gives her daughter, it’s clear who is supposed to participate in the picture-taking. Jo groans.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They do make it to Riverside before dark, and there is in fact a very classy granite marker. After much eye-rolling, Jo grudgingly agrees to participate.

“It’s a traditional part of going places,” she tells Cas in a long-suffering voice. “Stand in front of something notable, have people embarrass the crap out of you by taking a million pictures. Sorry. Hold your fingers like this, okay?”

The picture Mary sends to Dean - and, after a moment’s thought, Sam and Charlie as well - has Jo striking an adventurous pose on one side of the monument, brandishing finger-guns and looking very heroic, with Cas on the other side giving his Vulcan salute a deeply confused look.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They split up that night, Ellen and Jo in one room and Mary and Cas in another. Cas insists on checking Ellen and Jo’s warding before they all turn in, which they bear with surprising patience.

“Are you feeling tired?” Mary asks when they’ve retreated to their own room. “How’s your Grace doing?”

“I’m not very tired,” Cas says slowly, “but tomorrow may be perilous. I should probably attempt to rest.”

“And your Grace?” Mary asks pointedly.

Cas frowns. “Muted. It will be a while before it recovers from the resurrection spell, I think.”

Mary nods, checking her phone. She’s got texts from Dean ( _Lol_ , whatever that is) and Sam ( _Charlie says she’s having that picture framed_ ). She wonders if Sam’s message means they haven’t left the bunker to find Crowley yet. She knows they’d wanted to do some planning beforehand. “You worried about tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Fair enough. It would be more worrying if he wasn’t nervous, frankly. 

Cas shifts a little, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, and then says “Bartholomew was one of Naomi’s proteges.”

Mary puts the phone down immediately. “Was he one of the ones who…” she trails off, not exactly sure how to put it. ‘Brainwashed you’ seems harsh, even if it’s accurate, and ‘memory wiped’ sounds too clinical, like Cas’s brain was just a computer to tinker with. 

“I don’t know,” Cas says, frustrated. “I always knew Naomi was in Intelligence, although I wasn’t always aware of what that meant. I still don’t know if the work she did on us was the entire purpose of her department or if it was her specialty. Bartholomew may have been involved, or he may have been gathering intelligence in less… questionable ways. I did encounter him in battle from time to time, which would indicate a fieldwork component to his duties.”

Mary moves over to sit on Cas’s bed, facing him. “Look, Cas, you don’t have to come with us tomorrow.”

Cas frowns. “Of course I do.” He draws back a little bit. “Whatever interactions I may have had with Bartholomew in the past, they will not affect my ability to negotiate with him tomorrow. I am well aware of the stakes.”

Mary huffs in frustration. “No, Cas, that’s not -” she stops herself, getting her thoughts together. “No one’s casting aspersions on your dedication, kiddo. But if seeing Bartholomew is going to cause you pain - physical _or_ emotional - then I don’t want to put you in that position.”

Cas unbends slightly. “I… don’t know how I will react,” he says slowly. “I would like to find out.”

“Okay.” The most reachable part of him is his foot, so she gives that a little squeeze. “But if you change your mind, just let me know, all right? What they did to you was horrible, and you are never, _ever_ required to go anywhere near them if you don’t want to, do you understand? It doesn’t matter what else is going on.”

Cas nods hesitantly. “I understand.”

“Good. Now scoot down, you should try to get some sleep.”

Cas starts to comply, and then pauses. “Are you nervous about tomorrow, Mary?”

Mary leans on her hand, giving the question some consideration. “A little bit. I’m more worried about Sam and Dean going to see Crowley.” She’s also plenty worried about putting Bartholomew and Cas in the same place, but she doesn’t want to push Cas too hard about it. “Malachi makes me more nervous, to be honest. The torture wasn’t a great character reference.”

Cas inclines his head. “Your caution is not unwarranted. Malachi breaks rules, which makes him less predictable than Bartholomew.” He grimaces. “I admit that I would prefer to go into _that_ discussion with something substantial to bargain with. He showed a lot of interest in reversing Metatron’s spell when he was interrogating me - perhaps by the time we talk with him Kevin will have been able to discover something.”

Mary freezes guiltily. On the one hand, Cas has enough to deal with already without knowing the spell’s irreversible, and Dean does know Cas very well. He might be right about Cas’s breaking point, no matter what she and Sam think.

On the other hand, Dean’s shown himself to be overprotective and she can’t in good conscience keep this information from Cas. She doesn’t like dumping it on him the night before he has to face an unknown number of his siblings, but what if Bartholomew asks about it? What if Cas accidentally promises something he’ll never be able to deliver on?

She’s still for too long. Cas sits back up, frowning in concern. “Mary? Is something wrong?”

She sighs. “Yeah, Cas. I need to talk to you for a minute about something, okay?”

Cas’s forehead creases in confusion, probably because they already are talking, but he nods. “Of course. What is it?”

“I talked to Sam a little bit before we left,” she says, fighting the urge to look away from Cas’s face. “He told me that Kevin translated that section of the angel tablet and there’s no reversing the spell.”

“You mean the counterspell isn’t on the tablet,” Cas corrects, drawing away from her.

“To be fair, Sam didn’t specify,” Mary admits, “but he seemed pretty sure it was unbreakable.”

“No, it’s breakable,” Cas says firmly. “It’s reversible. All spells have a counter, a - a weak point, there’s no such thing as a - it _must_ be breakable, Mary. We just have to look harder. Perhaps if we can find the actual tablet for Kevin instead of having him work off his notes -”

Damn it, she’d been hoping to skate around this point. “Cas.” She waits for him to look at her. He’s trying so hard to keep his expression determined, but she can see the panic beneath it. “Sam said Kevin translated that a while ago from the actual tablet. They were... they were trying to spare you, so they didn’t tell you when they figured it out.”

He stares at her. “But it has to be reversible.”

She takes one of his hands in her own. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t think it is.”

“I -” he stops himself and puts his free hand over his face. She lets him take his time, rubbing her thumb against the back of his wrist.

“It’s my fault,” he says after a long moment. “I wanted to fix it. I can never fix anything.”

“Metatron’s fault, kiddo,” Mary says firmly.

Cas takes a long, shuddering breath and rests his forehead on his knee. “All this time, and I didn’t try to do anything about it, not really. I think I knew it couldn’t be reversed. I just - I wanted -”

“I know.” She runs her fingers through his hair, letting her hand rest against the back of his neck. “I know you did. I’m sorry.”

He raises his head, his expression strained and aching. “I’ve hurt them so much, Mary.”

“The angels?” He nods. Crap. She probably should have waited until after the negotiations to drop this bomb. They’re not going to get anywhere if Cas walks in thinking he needs to atone for something, as much as she hates herself for thinking that way. 

She gives him a tiny shake. “Hey. They’ve hurt you plenty too, remember? And the war they’re fighting now, against each other? That’s all on them. It’s their own choice, it’s got nothing to do with you. What was it you told Sam before - ‘the best way to recover from having made mistakes is to continue on with good work rather than to seek punishment’? The more allies we can get, the better our chances are for survival, right? Theirs too?”

Cas nods slowly. “Yes.”

“Okay. So we try to convince them to work with us tomorrow, and we protect everybody.” She gives him a reassuring smile. He still looks shaken and miserable, but she can see him finding his footing. Sometimes all you need to push through the turmoil is a task, and she knows how that feels. _Survival first._

“They might not agree. Bartholomew and Malachi have every reason to distrust us, and they think themselves above humanity,” he says.

“But we’re talking to more than just them, remember?” Mary says, rubbing his hand again. “They might refuse, but the other angels listening might agree. We don’t necessarily need the leaders if we can reach the rest of them.”

“Angels dislike doing things without a clear leader,” he says doubtfully, “but these are unusual times. It might work.”

Mary breathes out a little. He looks exhausted but a little bit less fragile, and hopefully the idea of reaching the other angels will give him something to hang onto if the negotiations fall through. “All we can do is try, okay? They have to want to be saved for us to help them. They have to take some responsibility for this too.”

Cas sighs. “They’re not always very good at recognizing salvation. _We_ aren’t.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well,” Mary says, smiling at him. After a moment he gives her a tiny smile back. “You think you can sleep a little?”

“I will try.” She waits while he lies down, and then she pulls the covers up over his shoulder and makes sure his angel blade is within reach.

“Sweet dreams, Cas.”

“And you as well.”

Mary lies awake for some time, mostly just listening to Cas breathe. He tosses and turns for a while, probably trying to get his thoughts in order, and she nearly goes to check on him more than once. But gradually his movements get smaller, less frustrated, and his breathing evens and slows. If he hasn’t fallen asleep he’s at least reached some sort of equilibrium within himself.

She rolls over, closes her eyes, and forces herself to relax. There will be plenty to worry about tomorrow. She won’t be any help to anyone if she’s sleep-deprived.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_”Hello, Mary.”_

_Mary groans and puts her arms over her head. “Now? Really?”_

_“Is something the matter?”_

_Muriel’s voice takes on a slightly sharp tone, and Mary curses herself for showing too much. She feels more sympathy for Muriel now than she did before she learned more about the kind of confusion the angels are facing, and about Muriel’s friendship with Cas, but Muriel’s still the enemy. One of their more helpful enemies, for the moment at least, but an enemy nonetheless. She does want to destroy the world._

_“No, sorry. I’m just tired.” She sits up and leans back against her headboard. Muriel’s seated across from her on Cas’s bed, and Mary has to suppress an instinctive flash of anger at the sight. It’s a dream bed, and it’s only dream-empty. The real bed still has Cas in it, and he’s safe and sleeping peacefully._

_“I asked Cas about what you said.”_

_Muriel’s expression doesn’t flicker and her body language doesn’t change. Mary really had never appreciated how expressive Cas can be until she was faced with Muriel. Cas has at least learned how to react to things._

_“What did he say?”_

_Mary had been hoping Muriel would give her something to work with, some indication of her feelings or strategy or _anything_ , but Muriel might as well be carved out of stone. What had she said the last time? She’d talked about Cas’s memory and she’d mentioned his journey to find the Righteous Man. Well, in the absence of anything useful about Muriel, maybe Mary can at least find out a little more about what had been done to Cas. _

_“He said he thought Naomi must be to blame.”_

_The flinch is barely noticeable. If Mary hadn’t honed her skills by watching Cas, she never would have noticed it - it’s nothing more than a slight tightening around Muriel’s eyes._

_“She was,” Muriel says. “Not for everything, but for enough.”_

_“Did she ever do that to you?” Mary asks, as gently as possible. Enemy Muriel might be, but there’s no reason to be cruel._

_“No.” Muriel shrinks into herself a little bit, involuntarily. It’s the first completely genuine body language Mary thinks she’s seen yet, and she wonders if it’s because Muriel was startled or if it’s because she’s finally been in a human body for long enough that it’s starting to bleed through. “My knowledge was more valuable than it was threatening. I was easily contained.”_

_“I bet you had to watch it happen to others, though,” Mary says thoughtfully._

_“So many others,” Muriel whispers, her voice haunted. “One day everything would be normal, and the next a friend would be… different. Mostly they were minor changes - a renewed zeal for the mission, or a resurgence of faith, but Castiel… he didn’t even know who I was. He was gone for so long. He’d forgotten things before, but he’d never forgotten an entire being. I don’t even know what it would have taken to do that to him.”_

_“That must have been frightening,” Mary says softly. She thinks she’s beginning to understand, at least a little bit. As an archivist Muriel’s skills needed to remain intact, but she was also powerless enough to not be a threat and vulnerable enough to be intimidated. Cas, as a soldier, was both more dangerous and more replaceable, no matter how much work he’d put into learning Old Enochian._

_“I was too afraid to even speak to him once I realised he didn’t remember me,” Muriel says quietly. “Heaven was a terrible place.”_

_“You don’t want to go back there,” Mary says, surprised. It makes sense in retrospect, of course, but she’d assumed that Muriel’s plan was a reaction to being cast out. She hadn’t thought it was an_ opportunity _for her._

_“No, I don’t,” Muriel says. “Our Father is gone. This world should have ended long ago. Everything that has happened since, all the misery and the fear - they’re death throes. Why would you want to prolong such suffering? Isn’t it kinder to end everything cleanly?”_

_“It’s not the end, Muriel,” Mary says, leaning forward. “I can see why it looks that way, but there’s so much left. Don’t you see? As long as there is something to fight for, something to protect -”_

_Muriel’s already shaking her head. “You sound like the Archangels. They were so convinced that if we just kept everything the same, our Father would return to us. All they did was ruin us. Our Father should have wakened Israfel before he left, but he did not. Once he was gone Gabriel should have acted in his stead, but he abandoned us too. I will not abandon my siblings.”_

_“But you still love them?” Mary asks, grasping at straws. “You still feel an obligation to them?”_

_“I have no choice in that,” Muriel says dully._

_“But if you love them, shouldn’t you protect them?” Mary asks. “There is so much left, there’s so much on Earth that you could see and experience. Isn’t that worth something? There are new things happening every day, new people to meet and new friends to make. Your Father created this world, can you really destroy it?”_

_“Now you sound like Castiel,” Muriel says._

_“He was your friend once,” Mary presses. “You could really kill him?”_

_“Yes,” Muriel says, as if surprised that Mary even has to ask. “You are too human, still, to understand. I will visit again once you have spoken to the angels. You will agree with me then.”_

“Wait, what do you mean?” Mary asks. Across from her Cas mumbles something and rolls over.

Mary buries her face in her pillow and groans.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They reconvene the next morning over breakfast in a nearby diner. Mary is tired and Cas is withdrawn, but by the time they’ve finished their coffee Jo and Ellen have mostly coaxed them into better spirits.

“Okay,” Ellen says finally, setting her fork down. “I know we’re basically the muscle on this job, but what are we expecting to walk into today?”

Cas leaves off poking his poached eggs and focuses his attention on Ellen and Jo. “Today we will try to make contact with Bartholomew. He tends to be very traditional, but he’s also a former intelligence operative. He’ll probably meet with us out of curiosity, if nothing else.”

“What do you think the chances are that he’ll like what we have to say?” Jo asks.

“Slim,” Cas says, shrugging. “Going from his past behavior, his goals are mostly to control the angels, retake Heaven, and kill Metatron, none of which we can help him with at the moment. We’ll be able to tell how seriously he takes us by how many angels he brings with him.”

“And Metatron’s the one we’re going to try and meet aftrewards?” Ellen asks. She looks like she wants a flowchart.

“That’s Malachi,” Mary explains. “Metatron’s the one who did the spell that cast all the angels out of Heaven. They hate him even more than they hate Cas.”

“Slightly more,” Cas allows. “Malachi is an anarchist, and Mary and I have both had personal dealings with him before.”

“He tried to torture us,” Mary chips in. “He had a torture dungeon. He was really trying too hard.”

“He will probably be the hardest to convince,” Cas says, grimacing. “Bartholomew is analytical enough to look at the situation logically and come to a decision from there, but Malachi is passionate. We killed a good number of his followers during our escape and he may hold a grudge.”

“In any case, our secondary goal is to get our message across to the followers,” Mary says. “It would be helpful to have a powerful angel lead the way, of course, but we’ve seen evidence that there are… cults, I guess, or sub-factions, within the main angel camps. We know there’s one led by an angel named Muriel - she’s the one who resurrected me - and we’re hoping that there are angels within Bartholomew and Malachi’s ranks that will like what we have to say enough to jump ship even if the leaders refuse.”

“Wait,” Jo says, eyebrows arched, “so Metatron’s basically not involved in this at all?”

“He was the catalyst, but he doesn’t seem to have any interest in it any more,” Mary says, frowning.

“Although…” Cas’s voice trails off. At their inquiring looks, he clears his throat and continues. “Gadreel was acting on someone’s orders when he killed Kevin and took the tablets. I think Metatron’s the most reasonable culprit.” He shrugs apologetically. “I’ve never understood Metatron very well, frankly. He cast the angels out of Heaven as revenge for being forced out himself, but he seems more interested in stories than power. At a guess I would say that he took the tablets on the off chance that something in them could be used to harm him. We’ve seen very little from him since Gadreel was cast out of Sam. It would be a mistake to discount him entirely, considering the power he has access to, but at the moment our concentration should remain on the Earth-bound angels.”

“More than enough for me,” Ellen says drily. “Okay. So what’s the next step?”

The next step is to drive out to the general vicinity of Mt Horeb and stand in a field for a while listening to Cas pray. Given the way their last attempt at something like this went, Mary’s a lot more vigilant than she was the first time. They’ve also carefully chosen a place that doesn’t have quite as many bushes to hide behind.

Also unlike last time, Cas only prays for about an hour before his phone rings. It’s just enough time, Mary thinks, for Bartholomew to consider the offer but also to make them feel like they’re waiting on his pleasure. She knows she probably shouldn’t make snap judgments about someone she hasn’t even met yet, but she already really dislikes Bartholomew.

They watch as Cas answers his phone. He listens for a moment, and then says “An hour is acceptable,” and hangs up.

“So?” Mary asks as he walks over.

“Bartholomew has agreed to meet,” Cas says. “I spoke to one of his lieutenants, an angel named Rebekah, and she has given us a site about half an hour from here. We are to meet with him in one hour. That should give us time to lay in some contingency plans.”

“Contingency plans?” Jo asks, stumbling over a lump of dirt as they hurry after Cas towards the car. “What kinds of contingency plans?”

“Angel banishing sigils,” Mary guesses. “But can we use those with you there?”

“Yes,” Cas says shortly. “It will banish me as well, but I can find my way back.”

“What if you end up with the angels we’re trying to get rid of?” Ellen asks, giving Cas a sharp look.

“The results are generally fairly random, although I admit that I haven’t been banished since we were barred from Heaven and I’m not sure what the effect will be with my Grace… being what it currently is,” Cas says. “Regardless, it may be necessary.”

“We’ll call that a last resort,” Mary says, giving Cas a disapproving look. She understands why he’s even making the suggestion, but she doesn’t have to like it. “What if there’s nothing there to paint the symbol on?”

Cas stops walking to consider this. “We should have it pre-painted on something we bring with us,” he decides finally. “I once brought a banishing sigil into a fight by carving it into my chest, but Jo’s jacket is dark enough that we should be able to paint one on her back without it being detected. Perhaps we should do both, just to be safe…”

“I think just the one on Jo’s jacket should be fine,” Ellen says, looking nauseated. Mary’s right behind her. Also, now she can’t stop wondering what happens when you carve an angel-banishing sigil onto an actual angel. She’s willing to bet the effects are extremely unpleasant.

They pull off the road halfway to the meeting point, once they’re sure they’re far enough from where Cas prayed to avoid an ambush. Mary volunteers to provide the raw materials, as it were, for the sigil painting, and they spread Jo’s jacket out on the hood of the car. Ellen and Jo watch with great interest as Mary paints.

“Kind of funny-looking, isn’t it?” Jo says, tilting her head to see the symbol from a different angle.

“It could look like a smiley face for all I care, so long as it works,” Ellen says, grinning.

Jo shrugs the jacket back on when Mary’s done, making faces and looking like she’s trying to wear it without actually physically touching it. “Figures that when hunter fashion finally got fancy it would wind up being all about blood.”

“And monster killing,” Ellen points out, and winces. “Sorry, Cas.”

Cas taps Mary’s arm and heals her cut before she can protest. “I don’t like it, but I can understand why you would think of us that way.”

“Them, Cas,” Mary corrects, giving Cas a stern look. He’d visibly winced that time, which is troubling. “And we have a first aid kit in the car.”

Cas gives her a suspiciously bland look. “We should keep driving.”

Mary rolls her eyes at him, but he’s right about their timeline. They get back in the car.

The address Bartholomew gave Cas turns out to belong to an abandoned strip mall on the outskirts of Mt. Horeb. There’s no one there when they arrive, and they stand awkwardly around in the parking lot, too tense to talk and getting more keyed up with every moment that passes. It’s probably exactly what Bartholomew wants.

“Should we take a picture in front of something?” Cas asks after a long moment of silence, and when Bartholomew does make his entrance it’s to find Cas with a quietly pleased expression on his face and the rest of them giggling uncontrollably. 

Bartholomew steps out of his limousine and gives them a flat, calculating expression before throwing his arms wide and walking forward.

“Castiel!” he exclaims, smiling, every inch the personable businessman meeting a favored acquaintance. Mary despises him passionately on sight.

“Bartholomew,” Cas says evenly. If seeing Bartholomew is causing him any distress, he isn’t showing it. “You seem well.”

“The faithful have been very welcoming,” Bartholomew says, shrugging modestly. “How have you been, brother? You seem…” he gives Mary, Ellen and Jo a dismissive once-over. “...Well. Courageous as ever, eh Castiel?”

Jo huffs slightly, annoyed, but stays silent. Mary focuses on being as expressionless as possible. They need allies. Even if their allies are douchebags, it’s still better than being killed by Abaddon or ripped apart by a mob of mindless Croats. Probably.

Two other angels step out of the car behind Bartholomew - an elderly white man who moves too fluidly for his apparent age, and a poised black woman Mary guesses is Rebekah. Two backup angels seems like a small entourage to Mary, which would fit with Bartholomew’s dismissive attitude, but they’ll still be formidable opponents if it comes to a fight. Behind her she hears Ellen shift slightly, probably clearing access to her weapons just in case.

“I am fine,” Cas says. “I’m concerned about Abaddon’s activities, though. Have you been informed of the spread of the Croatoan virus?”

Bartholomew’s face hardens. “I see your affection for the humans hasn’t lessened any.”

“The virus affects more than just the humans, Bartholomew,” Cas says sternly. “Each fallen soul gives Abaddon more power and each potential vessel lost weakens our position as well. You cannot possibly retake Heaven and make war on Metatron if you’re also fighting the massed armies of Hell. Surely you see that.”

Bartholomew tilts his head to the side, smiling faintly. “And what do you propose, Castiel?”

If Cas hears the condescending tone, it doesn’t seem to bother him. “It’s time to stop warring amongst ourselves, Bartholomew. All we’re doing is weakening ourselves for Abaddon’s final blow. When has angels killing angels ever worked out in our favor?”

“So you think,” Bartholomew says slowly, “that I should ally myself with you and Malachi? That I, the only one who still holds true to Heaven’s glory, accept an anarchist and a rebel as equals? You expect me to take _your_ advice when it comes to _battle tactics.”_

His voice is dripping with contempt. Cas frowns. “You were content enough to follow me when Raphael sought to restart the Apocalypse.”

“And you nearly doomed us all by flitting off to help your human pets at the drop of a hat!” Bartholomew spits. “You may prize your compassion, Castiel, but no one else does. You are a _soldier_ and you should remember your place.”

 _“Hey!”_ Mary says. Bartholomew tosses her an annoyed look. “You may not like Cas’s tactics but you can’t deny -”

“Don’t speak to me, mud-monkey,” Bartholomew says viciously. “All your kind has ever brought mine is misery and confusion and I will rejoice at your destruction.”

“They are our Father’s creations just as much as we are,” Cas says sharply. “This world was His joy and we are supposed to protect it. How can you call yourself the keeper of Heaven’s glory if you don’t understand -” he cuts himself off, mouth tight and angry, and then continues through gritted teeth. “Bartholomew. Philosophical differences aside, Abaddon presents a threat to you and it is foolish of you to ignore that. If you will not ally yourself with us, then at least focus your killing on demons instead of angels and humans.”

“I will make no promises to a betrayer,” Bartholomew says cuttingly. “Do not contact me again, Castiel. Consider this a conversation for old time’s sake. Next time I’m just going to kill you.”

“Good, I’d love an excuse to shoot you in the _face,”_ Jo says loudly.

“Control your pets, Castiel,” Bartholomew says in a bored tone, already walking back towards his car. The elderly angel falls into step beside him. Rebekah remains behind for just a second, giving them an inscrutable look, and then she follows as well.

They watch in silence as Bartholomew’s limo pulls out of the parking lot.

“Cas,” Mary says quietly, “you okay?”

His fists are clenched tight by his sides, as if only a great deal of willpower had prevented him from socking Bartholomew in the jaw, and his face is drawn and furious. “I’m sorry you had to witness that. Many of my siblings…” he shakes his head, and Mary realises with surprise that he’s _disappointed_. “This is not what an angel is supposed to be.”

She eyes him warily. Cas is tense as anything right now, strung tight and ready to crack. She can’t decide if she should offer him a hug or take him off to punch the crap out of something.

“We should get back on the road,” Ellen says, her voice quiet and grim. “Bartholomew might have said he won’t kill us this time, but I trust that fucker about as far as I could throw him.”

“Mom!” Jo says, shocked.

“Oh, please, your generation didn’t invent swearing,” Ellen says. “Now scoot.”

They’re silent as they pile back into the car. No one wants to point out that not only did they fail to persuade Bartholomew, he didn’t bring enough angels for them to get their message out in any meaningful way. That plus the straight-up death threat makes this negotiation a pretty clear failure.

Mary keeps an eye on Cas in the rear-view mirror as she drives. He spends the first half an hour glaring so hard out the window that she’s surprised nothing they pass spontaneously catches on fire, but by the time they hit the highway he’s gone expressionless again. She really wants to take him aside and find out what’s going on in his head, find out what seeing Bartholomew again has dredged up, but with Bartholomew out of the running they need to start making their way towards Malachi. She’s also wary of asking Cas about his memory stuff in front of Ellen and Jo - not because she doesn’t trust them with the information, but because it should be Cas’s choice.

“So,” Jo says tentatively. “Was that… pretty standard angel behavior, or is Bartholomew just unique?”

Ellen gives her a quelling look, and Jo subsides apologetically. “You don’t have to answer.”

Cas shifts. For a moment it looks like he’s putting his thoughts in order and getting ready to deliver a speech like the one he’d made the day before, and then he shakes his head and goes back to staring out the window. “I don’t know any more.”

That tears it. Mary starts looking for an exit. “We should probably stop for lunch. Ellen, would you mind calling Charlie and getting a better location for Malachi than ‘south-ish’?”

The side of Ellen’s mouth quirks. “Sure. And hey, Jo, when we stop, why don’t you go grab food for everyone? There’s got to be a place around here with picnic tables.”

There is. It’s pretty seedy-looking, but there are local cars in the parking lot and that’s generally a positive sign. Cas trails after Mary as she goes over to pick one of the picnic tables. She sits down on the cleanest one, putting her feet on the bench, and after a moment Cas sits down next to her, copying her pose.

“So,” Mary says. “What’s going on, kiddo?”

Cas leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “I’m just… I’m just tired,” he says after a moment. “The argument today with Bartholomew is one I have had before. I feel like I’m _always_ having it. There are angels who believe what I do, that life should be protected, but all too often they are not warriors or leaders and they are drowned out. We’re all so lost, Mary.” He gives her a despairing look. “It’s taken me years to learn how to survive without orders. In fact, it’s possible that it’s something I’ve been working towards for my entire existence. I’ve come to terms with it, but the others have not. Even those like Bartholomew and Malachi, even Muriel - they’re all lost. Frightened. And now, being cast out of Heaven and cut off from the remnants of divinity we managed to cling to... I have such pity for them, but I’m so angry as well.”

“It’s okay to feel both at the same time, Cas,” Mary says, letting her hand rest between his shoulderblades. “It’s okay to love someone and hate them at the same time.”

“I do hate them sometimes,” Cas whispers, ashamed. “Why do they keep doing such awful things? Why won’t anyone but me act? Why can’t we even treat _each other_ with kindness?” He rubs his forehead. “I’m being unfair. It’s much more complicated than that.”

“It’s okay to be unfair sometimes too,” Mary says, smiling a little. She brushes a bit of hair away from his eyes. “Did anything come back when you saw Bartholomew?”

He straightens up a little, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “A little bit. Impressions more than anything else, although I think I’ve remembered some more of my Old Enochian too. I’ll have to sit down with some paper and see what I can do. Maybe more will come.”

“That’s great, Cas,” Mary says reassuringly. She’s glad he didn’t remember anything too traumatic, although she’s a little too cynical at this point to assume it’s because there’s no more trauma for Cas to remember. “We can find you some paper. Wherever we stop tonight will probably have some you can use, unless you’d like to work on it in the car.”

Cas shakes his head. “Tonight will be fine.” He frowns a little, distracted. “Why are they standing over there?”

Mary looks over. Ellen and Jo are laden down with trays of food and loitering nonchalantly by the corner of the building. Mary stifles a laugh. “Maybe they just don’t see us,” she says, waving to let them know it’s okay to approach.

“I wasn’t sure what everyone wanted, so I got a little of everything,” Jo says as they come closer. “I figured we could just divvy everything up.”

“Good idea,” Mary says, moving off the table and down to the bench to make room for the food. “Thanks, Jo. Ellen, did Charlie say anything?”

Ellen swaps one of her slices of pizza with half of Jo’s french fries. “You’ll love this, Cas. Apparently Malachi’s holed up outside of some town in Kentucky called Providence.”

Cas rolls his eyes, too intent on eating to make a comment. Jo grins. “Enjoying your buffalo wings, there, champ?”

Cas abruptly stops chewing and sets his food down, looking unnerved. “Buffalo don’t have wings.”

Jo cackles. “Your face right now!” 

“Named for the town, Cas. It’s okay, they’re safe,” Ellen says, laughing.

They pull off for the night just shy of their destination, like they did on the way to Mt Horeb. It takes them a little longer than they’d anticipated, because Charlie is worried about possible demon activity in Peoria and has them detour, but they make it in pretty good time regardless.

Once they’re settled, Mary finds Cas a notepad and then steps outside to check in with the boys. They’ve left the bunker and are halfway to the meeting with Crowley, and she spends a few minutes chatting first with Dean, who seems preoccupied, and then with Sam, who locks himself in the bathroom so he can complain heatedly about his brother for ten minutes before saying “Okay, good, that’s out of my system. Thanks, Mom.” 

“No problem,” Mary says, equal parts bemused and amused.

By the time she gets back to the room, Cas has filled a few pages of the notepad and has them pinned to the wall. She sits down next to him and they study the pages for a few minutes in silence.

“How are Dean and Sam?” Cas asks.

“Haven’t killed each other yet,” Mary says, since it’s something she feels she can joke about now.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Cas says seriously. “I’ve heard a few prayers from Dean today and most of them have been for patience.”

Somehow, she always forgets that Dean and Cas have that connection. “Given what Sam was complaining about, I’m not surprised. They’re planning to meet up with Crowley tomorrow.”

Cas nods. “Did they have anything to say about our meeting with Bartholomew?”

“Dean didn’t seem surprised,” Mary says. Dean had, in fact, been unsurprised with a few choice phrases that called Bartholomew’s personal hygiene, ancestry, and biological functions into question, and then he’d checked to make sure Cas was handling everything okay. “Sam was a little disappointed, but we’ve still got Malachi.”

“True.” He doesn’t seem upset about it any more, or at least not as upset as he was earlier. Mary hopes it’s because he’s feeling better and not because he’s hiding it. “You don’t have to come tomorrow, Mary.”

“Wait, what?” Mary says, thrown.

Cas gives her an intent look. “Earlier you told me that I never ever had to face anyone who had hurt me if I didn’t want to. Malachi hurt you. You don’t have to face him if you don’t want to.”

Mary smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind, but I think I’ll be fine. Thanks for checking.”

“Okay.” He turns back to his scribbles. They contemplate them for another minute.

“What are we looking for?” Mary asks, finally.

“I don’t know yet,” Cas admits.

Jo chooses that moment to knock on their door and stick her head in. “We found _Princess Bride_ on TV, wanna come watch it in our room?” 

Mary’s never heard of _Princess Bride_ , but it sounds like a lot more fun than staring at Old Enochian all night. “Cas?”

“I’ve never seen it,” Cas says, getting up.

They all pile onto one of the beds in Ellen and Jo’s room, stealing pillows and blankets from the second bed until they have a respectable nest going.

“No weapons on the bed, Joanna Beth,” Ellen says sternly. Jo makes a face and starts depositing things on the bedside table.

“Where do you hide all those?” Mary asks, several awed minutes later. Jo just grins and elbows Cas out of the way so she can fit without falling off.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next morning, Mary borrows Jo’s jacket while everyone is still getting ready and steps outside to freshen up the sigil on the back. Depending on how successful they are at getting in touch with Malachi it might need to be done again, but given the detour last night she thinks it’s better to be safe than sorry.

She hasn’t gotten any farther than laying the jacket out on the car before Ellen joins her.

“Figured it would be a good thing to learn,” Ellen says shrugging. “Let me?”

Mary steps back and lets Ellen at the jacket. “I’ve only used it once, myself, but it’s pretty impressive. Cas was human then, though, so I didn’t have to worry about banishing him too.”

Ellen nods, studying the mark. “Fair warning, if I think there’s going to be trouble I’ll use this. I like Cas and I would never wish any harm on him, but Jo comes first.”

Mary nods. “I understand.” She can hardly fault Ellen for being protective, after all.

Ellen concentrates on her work, not looking up at Mary. “I don’t know if anyone’s told you anything about how Jo and I died.”

Mary feels a sharp pang in her stomach. Intellectually, she knows that everyone they brought back must have died at some point. She’s been avoiding thinking about it too much, though. “No, not really. I know you owned a roadhouse and helped the boys out a lot. Thank you for that.”

“They’re good kids,” Ellen says, nodding. “Stubborn, pigheaded idiots who are obsessed with doing everything alone, sometimes, but they’re good kids. Jo and I were trying to help them stop Lucifer from starting the Apocalypse when we died. She went first. I was holding her when she stopped breathing.”

God. Mary can’t even imagine - well, that’s a lie, it’s been the subject of most of her worst nightmares. But she hadn’t - she never would have guessed. Ellen’s manner is usually so practical and she’s so funny with Jo. Mary never would have known.

Ellen’s expression now is even and matter-of-fact, but her voice is hard. “I’ve learned that it’s better to travel with her than to forbid her to leave or to let her go off on her own, so when she wanted to help with this I agreed to come too. But just so you know, I’m not letting that happen again.”

“I understand,” Mary says, mouth dry.

“Good.” Ellen finishes her work and holds the jacket up. “Verdict?”

She can’t concentrate on sigils now. She’s too busy not thinking about Dean and Sam going to see the King of Hell. She’s not thinking about Cas in chains screaming as he was tortured, or about whatever Malachi might try to spring on them today. She’s _not._ “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it looks good.”

“Hey.” Ellen puts down the jacket and grips Mary’s shoulder. “The four of us, we’re pretty damn formidable, okay? And Sam and Dean are tough and they’re smart. I only know Jim and Caleb by reputation, but they should be good backup. Don’t borrow trouble.”

Mary nods jerkily. “No. You’re right.” She tries a smile. “It’s everyone else who should be worried about what we’re going to do to them, right?”

“Right.” Ellen pulls her in for a one-armed hug, kissing her quickly on the temple. “What do you think the odds are that Jo and Cas are ready to go yet?”

Mary laughs a little. “Well, Cas has probably gotten distracted by his Old Enochian. Or cartoons - it could go either way with him.”

Ellen laughs. “Jo’s probably still fussing with her hair. I guess we’d better go get them.” She gives Mary another squeeze and lets go. “I bet I can get mine ready before you get yours.”

“You’re on.”

Ellen and Jo win, but only by about thirty seconds.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It takes Malachi longer to get in touch with them than it took Bartholomew, so by the time they arrive at the place he’d specified it’s already late afternoon. They arrive first, again, to an abandoned coal processing plant a little ways away from Providence. It appears to be structurally sound, so after a moment of indecisive loitering they decide to check the interior.

No one’s inside, either, but they’ve only been there for a few minutes when Malachi arrives, striding through the main entrance with about ten angels behind him. He’s still slight and unprepossessing, but the amount of backup is pretty attention-grabbing.

And then more angels come in from the side entrance, and more show up on the second-story walkway.

“Guess he remembers what happened the last time we talked,” Mary mutters.

They shift instinctively to stand back-to-back, Cas and Mary facing Malachi, and Ellen and Jo watching their backs. Mary hears a slight hiss of pain as Ellen slices her hand in preparation for activating the sigil on Jo’s back.

“Malachi,” Cas says coolly.

“Castiel,” Malachi returns. He takes a few steps forward, leaving the crowd of angels slightly behind him. They seem content to wait around the periphery, for the time being at least, which is marginally reassuring. “Why have you come?”

“Only to talk, Malachi,” Cas says. Malachi scoffs, but Cas continues undaunted. “Abaddon has unleashed the Croatoan virus. It presents a danger to -”

“No,” Malachi says.

“I assure you, it does present a danger,” Cas says patiently.

“I am aware,” Malachi says. “But no, I will not listen to what you have to say.”

Cas frowns. “Perhaps you won’t, but I will speak anyway. Abaddon’s power increases at the expense of both humanity and the angels. This is not the time to war with each other, Malachi. This is the time to survive and protect each other.”

“We will survive,” Malachi says, “but we will do it without you, you _abomination._ I know what you did.”

“If I am the only obstacle, then so be it,” Cas says, frustration leaking into his voice. “Mary and her friends come as delegates from the humans. I will absent myself from these proceedings if my presence is objectionable. This threat is greater than any one of us. I wish survival for all.”

Mary doesn’t like this at all. Quite apart from the insult to her friend, if Cas has to walk away right now he’ll be leaving their protection and making his way through an unknown number of angels, any one of whom could try to do him harm. He’s a good fighter, Mary’s seen it, but even he can be overwhelmed and with his Grace the way it is…

Malachi looks a little thrown by the offer. “Regardless,” he says. “There will be no alliance. We don’t need humanity. We have been fighting demons since before humanity even had spines.”

“Seems to be going pretty well, too,” Mary says pointedly. Malachi frowns at her, as if he’s not sure why she’s bothering to interrupt. “Why did you come, if you didn’t want to talk? Did you just want to scare us with how many followers you’ve got? Because I have to say, we’ve been keeping an eye on Abaddon’s activities and right now she’s scarier.”

Malachi scowls. “I wouldn’t expect a human to understand.”

“Maybe I don’t,” Mary agrees, shrugging. “Maybe my puny human brain isn’t enough to grasp the intricacies of angelic politics, or whyever it is that you’re killing each other and letting demons run rampant. What I do know is that this is my home, and it’s my friends and my children who are getting caught in the crossfire. So no, I don’t understand, and I don’t really care to. I’m interested in saving lives, and if I can save yours too I’m interested in that as well.”

“And yet you would turn out Castiel, who you claim as an ally?” Malachi sneers.

“Of course I wouldn’t, that was your idea,” Mary snaps. Honestly, she’s really had enough of the angels and the way they treat Cas. She knows she doesn’t know everything that’s happened, but she’d fed up and she couldn’t possibly care less about it. “Cas stays. You can get over that or not, it doesn’t matter to me. What he’s done is not who he is, and who he is is my friend. I protect my friends. So.” She steps forward and turns, looking past Malachi to the angels with him. “Who wants to be friends?”

There’s a moment of slightly awkward silence, while Malachi’s smirk gets exponentially more irritating, and then a steady voice by the secondary entrance says “I will be your friend.”

A female angel comes forward. Mary frowns at her - she looks a lot like the one who’d been at the meet with Bartholomew.

“I am Rebekah,” she says. “I have friends as well. We would be honored to exchange protection and fellowship.”

Sure enough, there are others moving in the crowd, stepping forward and coming to stand by them.

“We’d be honored to accept,” Mary says gravely, heart thumping. It _is_ the same angel. Did she wait to come because she was gathering her followers, or is it some plot of Bartholomew’s?

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Malachi says. “Rebekah, the humans are fleeting at best and fragile at worst. They can’t stand before demons or angels. They’ll be wiped out, and you along with them.”

“At least they are fighting for love and protection,” Rebekah says evenly. “For years all the angels have fought for is outdated philosophies and pointless grudges. If in fact there is nothing left for us in this world, then I for one would like to spend my remaining time doing something I am not ashamed of.”

A few more angels detach from Malachi’s crowd, some looking sheepish and some defiant.

“Spread the word,” Rebekah says, raising her voice. “All those who wish to join us will be welcome. We will pass no judgment. Whatever you have done, whoever you have fought for, we will travel together from now on and find a new way. One for all of us.”

“That’s enough,” Malachi says sharply. “Rebekah, you court death. I will mourn for you and your followers when the time comes.”

“Likewise,” Rebekah says, and Malachi scowls as he turns to go.

Most of the remaining angels follow him, but there are a few who accidentally get left behind and somehow end up standing with Rebekah instead. After a moment Malachi and his followers are gone, and Mary and her team are standing silently in a warehouse with a bunch of angels.

“So,” Jo says brightly to the closest angel, who’s built like a tank and standing like someone who expects to be yelled at, “how you doing?”

“I am well, human,” the angel says, blinking.

“Actually, I go by Jo.”

“Jo,” the angel repeats obediently, and a murmur of _Jo_ goes through the crowd. Jo’s expression goes a little weirded-out. “I am Gagiel.”

“Okay, Gagiel,” Jo says. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?”

Mary turns away as Jo, smiling determinedly, is deferentially introduced to angels with names like Aaoxaif and Omia, and focuses on her own team. Ellen is relaxing infinitesimally, and Cas is positively beaming with relief.

“Thank you, Mary,” he says, “and thank you, Rebekah.”

Rebekah smiles back and says “Well met, Castiel.” She reaches out to touch his shoulder and then jerks her hand back as if she’s just accidentally come in contact with something slimy. “Castiel, what did you do?” she breathes, her expression horrified.

Oh God, his stolen Grace. Mary had never wondered what it would look like to another angel, and apparently no other angel has gotten close enough to sense the wrongness of it. “He did it to save me,” she says quickly. “He didn’t have a choice. We both would have been killed.”

“This going to be a problem?” Ellen asks, watching Rebekah carefully.

“Only for Castiel,” Rebekah says, her voice pitying. She reaches out a hand and then pulls it back, as if she wants to heal Cas but can’t quite bring herself to touch him. “Brother, I am sorry that such a choice was forced on you.”

Cas shrugs, his expression wooden. “It was preferable to the alternative.”

“I will trust your judgment,” Rebekah says. She turns away from Cas reluctantly to look at Ellen. “Child, are you injured?”

Ellen’s expression is priceless. “Uh. I cut my hand, but I’m okay.”

“Here. I will tend to it.”

Mary sidles over to Cas. In the background she can hear Jo making a valiant attempt to pronounce a name that sounds like it doesn’t contain any vowels. “Cas?”

“I am fine.” His smile is a little strained, but she supposes it could be worse. “This is cause for celebration, Mary, no matter what… awkwardness might have occurred.”

“Okay,” Mary says, tucking her hand in his and leaning up against him. He sighs gratefully. “Do you know Rebekah?”

“Not personally,” Cas says, “but I know of her by reputation. She is a healer - a Rit Zien, in fact. She is known for her compassion.”

“Really?” Mary says, frowning. The only other Rit Zien they’ve met killed a bunch of people before trying to execute Cas. “Should we be worried about this?”

“I don’t think so,” Cas says. “Rebekah was considered a bit of a radical because she used her killing power so rarely. In human terms she would be called a pacifist, although it’s not a concept angels entirely understand.”

Mary snorts. “No, I guess they don’t.” Orders are orders, after all, and a personal philosophy only holds up for so long against the kind of indoctrination angels tend to go in for. “Well, she did just seriously help us out.”

Cas nods, watching Ellen flex her healed hand and go stand by Jo and her gaggle of angels. “Yes, very much. I had thought this would also end in complete failure when Malachi refused to have anything to do with me. If it wasn’t for you and Rebekah...”

Mary gives him a surprised look. “Rebekah was the one with Bartholomew, yesterday, right? That means that it was your speech there that convinced her. I’d say that makes both of these negotiations successes.”

Cas start to speak, and then stops, looking thoughtful. “I hadn’t considered that.” He smiles a little. 

Mary nudges him in the ribs. “Stop selling yourself short, kiddo. We rocked. Say it back to me.”

The smile is a full one now. “We rocked.”

“Damn straight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They do, in fact, have a [monument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside,_Iowa) for Jim Kirk in Riverside. Their town motto is even ‘Where the Trek begins’. 
> 
> Rebekah is technically an existing Supernatural character (they probably intended her name to be spelled ‘Rebecca’, but I liked it the other way), although she only appears physically on-screen as a photograph at a memorial service. She’s introduced posthumously in 9x14 ‘Captives’ as the leader of the Penitents, a non-violent faction mostly killed off by Bartholomew. I decided to keep her alive, since a) she sounded awesome, and b) resurrecting characters is kind of turning into a major theme of this story anyway. I included her with the other angels under ‘original characters’, though, because I’m employing a greater degree of authorial caveat with her than usual. The other angels are pretty much completely original, because Supernatural generally likes live evil angels and dead good ones.
> 
> On a totally other note: the number of times I accidentally wrote ‘Balthazar’ instead of ‘Bartholomew’ (or, once or twice, ‘Balthalomew’) when I was doing this chapter, oh my God. If you notice any I missed, let me know.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: This one has a little bit of gore in it, but it’s easy to skip if gore isn’t your thing. Just don’t read the last paragraph in the italicised section, and you shouldn’t miss any of the important plot stuff.  
> SPOILERS: 3x15 ‘Time Is On My Side’, minor for 9x22 ‘Stairway to Heaven’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Military ranks  
> NEW TAGS: Bela Talbot, Hannah

Mary and Cas stand together and watch the angels mill around for a moment. Ellen and Jo are each surrounded by a small cluster of them, and Rebekah by a larger group. A lot of the angels have that slightly stunned look that comes from making a major decision without having properly thought it through first, but there are several who look positively joyous. An angel in an elderly woman is even going from being to being and giving them hugs, which seems like startlingly ebullient behavior for an angel.

Mary bumps Cas with her shoulder. “I want to check in with the home front for a sec. You should go mingle.”

Cas sighs. Mary doesn’t entirely blame him for his reluctance, given Rebekah’s reaction to his stolen Grace. “We shouldn’t stay here for too long. I doubt that Malachi will risk coming back after we successfully stole a number of his followers but it isn’t wise to take chances.”

Mary nods. “Okay. I’ll see if the others have any suggestions.” For all their talk of convincing individual angels if the leaders wouldn’t listen, she’d kind of expected to wind up with an established faction that already had their own base if they even got anyone at all. She’s not entirely sure what to do with a group of what are essentially fugitive rebels.

Cas squares his shoulders and walks towards the crowd, and Mary retreats across the room. She doesn’t want to go out of their sight, for her own safety as well as theirs, but a little distance should give her some privacy.

She pauses, remembering Cas’s angelic hearing, and then keeps going. Maybe a _lot_ of distance.

She winds up at the far end of the processing floor, perched on a catwalk running over the old machinery. It’s a decent vantage point, plus it’s reasonably comfortable. Win-win.

After a moment of debate, she sends a text to Dean ( _Free to talk?_ ) and calls Charlie. She’s worried about her boys, of course, but if they’re at a delicate point in their negotiating the last thing they need is for someone’s phone to ring.

Charlie answers on the fifth ring, sounding frazzled. “Hey, Mary, what’s up?”

“Just checking in. You sound busy, should I call back?”

Charlie takes a deep breath and lets it out. “No, it’s fine, I’ve just been up for a while and had kind of a lot of coffee so I’m a little wired? But I can take a sec. How’d the talk with Malachi go? He didn’t torture you again, did he? Or try, I mean, because I’m assuming you would have led with that if he -”

“Charlie,” Mary says patiently.

“Right! Sorry. You can talk now.”

“Thank you,” Mary says gravely, fighting to keep her smile from showing in her voice. “The talks with Malachi didn’t go well - he definitely remembers what happened last time and he showed up with a crapton of backup. But it turns out that one of the lieutenants Bartholomew brought, Rebekah, actually agreed with us and used the time between the two meetings to gather her own followers, so she’s on our side.”

“That’s awesome!” Charlie says. “No, that’s actually really good news, because Abaddon’s stepped up the Croatoan stuff. I mean, we’ve got a bunch of extra hunters now so we’re holding our own, and battle-wise she’s still mostly focused on Crowley and the angels, but it wouldn’t take much to tip the balance. The more help we can get the better.”

Well, that’s only kind of good. “Have you heard from Dean and Sam yet?”

“Not _extensively,”_ Charlie says. “Sam texted me to let me know that Crowley agreed with the idea of an alliance, but I don’t have any details. I think they’re coming here to hash some stuff out. You might want to bring a couple of the angels so we can have a summit or something.”

“That was my other question,” Mary says. “Since we’ve kind of got the misfits from Bartholomew and Malachi’s camps, I don’t think they really have a base or anything. You got any suggestions for where I should put them all up until we figure something? There’s about twenty of them.”

“Yeah!” Charlie says, and Mary hears her scrambling through what sounds like several papers and at least one electronic device. “Yeah, um, if they’re agreeable we can just deploy them right away, have them back up the hunter teams we’ve already got stationed around the country. You know - hang on, I’m going to pass you over to Dorothy, she’s doing the logistics right now.”

“Okay, thanks Charlie,” Mary says, but Charlie’s already put the phone down to bellow for Dorothy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary finishes her talk with Dorothy and stays for a moment on the catwalk, watching the crowd at the other end of the room. She hasn’t heard back from either of the boys yet, although Charlie’s report that they’ve checked in does ease her mind somewhat. She’s glad that they’ve now managed to secure help from at least a few other parties, especially given what Charlie said about the uptick in Abaddon’s activities, but she still doesn’t like having to do anything with Crowley. The last time he got involved he’d had some extremely worrying plans involving Dean, and she doesn’t for one second assume he’s given up and is now allying with them for purely altruistic reasons. He seems like the type to always have an agenda of his own.

Before she can talk herself into too much of a panic attack, her phone rings. Speak of the - urgh. Bad phrase.

“Hi, kiddo, how’d your negotiations go?”

“What?” Dean says. “Oh, yeah, fine. Um, good, Crowley’s on our side, so, yeah.”

Mary frowns. “Something up?”

“No, we’re fine. How’d it go with the angels?”

“Better than I thought it would,” Mary says, still frowning but willing to let Dean guide the conversation for now. “We didn’t get Bartholomew or Malachi, but we got a rogue faction led by an angel named Rebekah who Cas says has a good reputation. There’s about twenty of them right now.”

“That’s good,” Dean says, sounding a little surprised. “Angels are usually a bag of dicks. How’re they treating Cas?”

Mary makes a face, watching the crowd. “About as well as could be expected. The stolen Grace thing is kind of freaking them out, but they seem okay for now. Rebekah said that she trusted Cas’s judgment that it was necessary. The rest of them seem fine as long as they don’t have to get too close.” Watching Cas interact with the angels is actually kind of comical, in a heartbreaking way. There is a bubble of clear space around him at all times that only Ellen and Jo seem willing to enter, although she can see him stop and talk with angels as he goes and the conversations seem cordial enough. Watching him walk through the crowd is a little like seeing Moses part the Red Sea.

“Probably the best outcome, actually,” Dean says. “Angels always seem to either want to kill him or make him into The Chosen One and neither of those tends to end well.”

“Well, I guess we’ll get to explore a whole new dynamic,” Mary says dryly. “So what’s up on your end? You seemed a little distracted when you called.”

“Oh,” Dean says. “No, I was just… we’re, um, we’re stopped for gas right now. The others are in the convenience store, so it seemed like a good time.”

“Okay,” Mary says, not missing that Dean waited until he was alone to call her. “You talk to Charlie yet? She seems pretty wired.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah, she said Abaddon’s upping the ante, so it’s… hey, Mom? It’s, uh, while we were talking, Crowley said that if I’d only taken the Mark and the Blade from Cain that I would have killed Abaddon before any of this Croatoan stuff even happened.”

Oh, _hell_ no.

“Yeah, well, Crowley’s a manipulative asshole,” Mary says tartly. “Even Cas doesn’t know what would have happened to you if you’d taken it. What if it had turned you into a demon like Cain? What if you ended up being the next monster we had to fight and kill? Can you imagine what that would have done to us?”

Dean’s silent for a long moment. “I didn’t think about that,” he says finally, his voice muffled. He sounds a little sick.

Mary sighs, guilty. “You can’t play the ‘what if’ game if you won’t look at all the possibilities, sweetheart,” she says. “Maybe you could have saved a lot of people, sure. But maybe you would have turned into something like Abaddon and then carried out her plans anyway. Given a choice between the two, I’m glad we’ve got you safe and on our side, even if we ended up with Abaddon in the mix.”

Dean’s quiet again, for long enough that Mary actually checks to make sure her phone’s still connected. “Sweetheart?”

“Still here,” Dean says. “I, um… that’s the kind of choice Sam was trying to make when he was closing Hell, huh.”

“Pretty close to it,” Mary says cautiously. Sam’s choice would have resulted in his death and the world’s survival, and they can’t predict what the outcome of Dean damning his soul to take out Abaddon would look like. She can see how he came to the comparison, though.

“Fuck,” Dean says tiredly.

“Yeah,” Mary agrees. Honestly, she can see both sides of the argument, even if as their mother she comes down unequivocally on the side of their survival. “Just to be clear, if either of you die or trade your souls I am going to be _extremely_ fucking pissed.” 

It’s sort of validating Dean’s decision to force Sam into surviving the Hell trials, which is high-handed behavior that she shouldn’t be encouraging, but it does also make him laugh. Sometimes you just take the win.

“Okay,” Dean says. “Sam and Pastor Jim are coming back, so we’re probably going to get on the road soon. You guys coming to the bunker?”

“Yeah,” Mary says, letting the previous topic of conversation go. “We still need to talk it out a little, but I think we’re going to ask some of Rebekah’s angels to go back up the hunters we’ve got in place and we’re going to take some of them with us to the bunker so you guys can sit down with them too.”

“You know,” Dean says, “I think it’ll do me some good to watch Crowley in a room full of angels with smiting power, I’m not going to lie.”

Mary grimaces - Crowley is something they’re definitely going to have to break to Rebekah before they make it to the bunker. “All right. Drive safe.”

After Dean hangs up, Mary sits for a moment with the phone pressed to her mouth, thinking hard. The idea that Crowley has his own agenda is nagging at her. It’s not a surprising thought, but it’s one that grows, because for that matter how can they know which angels are trustworthy? They’ve got Cas’s word about Rebekah, which Mary does trust, and Rebekah’s word about the rest, which she is reserving judgment on. And with Crowley come demons, who are only trustworthy so far as their own interests are being served.

She watches the crowd below for a moment, and then thinks _I pray to the angel Castiel - can you come up here for a sec?_

Down below she sees Cas extract himself from a conversation with a few of Rebekah’s angels and turn to head her way. She waits until he’s climbed up onto the catwalk and settled next to her, their legs dangling above the abandoned machinery.

“You don’t actually have to be that formal,” Cas says, amused. “As long as you start with my name, I’ll get it.”

Mary shrugs. “I kind of like the formality.”

“It’s a little nostalgic for me as well,” Cas agrees, and for the first time it occurs to Mary that in his long life there have of course been other people who have prayed to him. 

“You needed to speak with me? Did Dean and Sam have something to say?”

Mary shakes off her thoughts. “Yeah, I talked to Dean a little. They’re headed back to the bunker with Crowley.” 

Cas makes a face. Despite her preoccupation, Mary has to smile. “Not a fan?”

Cas rolls his eyes. “No. Crowley’s an opportunist - the most we can hope for is that he has an ulterior motive that doesn’t directly interfere with our survival.”

Well, that’s hardly a glowing recommendation. “And the worst?” Mary asks. 

“Abaddon has him frightened enough that he thinks we can save _him.”_ Cas says dryly. “There’s only so much we can tell from Charlie’s work - her information is from a distance and after the fact. We know that Crowley and Abaddon are still engaging each other in battle, but we generally can’t tell who loses in what numbers or where the power balance actually is.”

Mary nods thoughtfully. “You know, Cas, whatever Crowley’s other goals might be it’s occurred to me that with our new allies we have a pretty unique opportunity, at least for the moment. The two of us actually have a chance to let the others take the lead for a little while.”

Cas frowns a little - it must sound like a pretty big non sequitur, coming on the heels of his assessment the way it does. “Do you wish to take a break, or are you worried about my abilities? I have other uses if Crowley or the angels won’t work with me.”

“I know you do,” Mary says, skipping over Cas’s self-esteem for the moment. “That’s what I’m talking about. We have a breather here, and I think we should take advantage of it.”

Cas gives her an assessing look. “How so?”

Mary twists to face him more fully. “I want you to sit down and think of the absolute most desperate we could ever be, and then make a plan for it. We have allies and resources at our disposal. Right now is the time for it.”

Cas looks back out over the room. “You’re that certain this will fail?”

“I think planning for failure might save our lives.”

Cas nods slowly. “I agree.”

“Mull it over for a little while,” Mary suggests. She feels bad about putting this on him, especially given his propensity for extreme solutions in the past, but between his cleverness and his combat experience he’s definitely the most ideal one for the job. “If there are specific people you want to help you, we can get you to them. Same for resources. I’d do it quietly, though. You don’t even have to tell me what you’re planning if you don’t want to. Just don’t put it in motion until we absolutely have to.”

“Yes,” Cas says absently, already lost in thought. “That’s wise. There is no need to alarm the others.”

“Yeah,” Mary says reluctantly. It feels defeatist to even think about it, but she still remembers the feeling of standing in Cantril and realising just what a supernatural war on Earth might look like. They may have had some recent successes, but only an idiot would assume those are permanent.

“Rebekah says that angels have been disappearing,” Cas says quietly.

Mary turns to look at him. “What? Disappearing how?”

Cas shrugs. “No one knows. They simply can’t be found. It doesn’t seem to matter what camp they’re in or where their allegiances lie. There have only been a few, and there are never any signs of foul play, but the other angels are starting to take notice.”

“What do you think it is?” Mary asks.

Cas shakes his head. “I don’t know. Both Malachi and Bartholomew have resorted to force in the past to secure followers - that’s partly why Muriel and Rebekah’s movements seem so attractive.”

“So you think it might be another sect?” Mary says wearily. At this rate they’re going to have to start using charts to keep everything straight.

“I can’t say for sure. It could be that those angels are being forced into something, it may be that they’ve disappeared for their own reasons. Thus far it’s not _worrying,_ exactly, it’s just… a curiosity.” He stares out over the little knot of angels below them. “Perhaps a harbinger.”

Well, that’s unsettling. “Maybe we should get a move on.”

“Yes.” Cas stands fluidly and reaches a hand down to help her up. “When we return to the bunker, I would like Gagiel and Aaoxaif to come with us.”

“You got an idea already?” Mary asks, impressed.

“I was going to suggest it anyway, for other reasons, but now I have… an inkling,” he says, and smiles.

Mary laughs. “Good word, Cas.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They decamp to a motel just over the Illinois border for the night, Rebekah and her angels promising to see them in the morning and then fading away into the surrounding countryside rather than finding rooms in the hotel. They had listened carefully to Mary’s proposal about splitting up, and then decided that they’d rather travel to the bunker together and split up from there. Mary’s pretty sure it’s because they either too scared or too untrusting to separate before they have a chance to size up the hunter operation, and she can’t say she blames them for it.

Three of the them, Mary’s amused to see, have taken a shine to Jo and tend to follow her around like millenia-old divinely powerful puppies. They look particularly upset at Mary’s idea.

“Movie night?” Jo suggests once they’re alone.

Ellen and Mary trade exhausted looks. “No,” Cas says.

Jo just laughs. “I’m surrounded by old fogeys. If it wasn’t a dumbass risk, I’d see if any of the angels wanted to go clubbing.”

“In this town?” Ellen says, giving their surroundings a professionally disdainful look.

Rebekah and her angels do show up the next morning as promised, plus a few extras who came and found them during the night. Cas switches over to ride in Rebekah’s car instead of Mary’s so he can talk to her a little bit, and by the time they stop for lunch she’s been informed about Crowley’s presence at the bunker. She’s not thrilled about it, but she doesn’t look ready to smite anybody, either.

Jo’s angels gravitate over to her and she spends most of their lunch break explaining the uses and benefits of ketchup, although she can’t persuade any of them to actually try consuming food. Cas watches the entire scene with a faintly superior expression and puts mustard on his fries.

They reach the bunker early in the afternoon and park out front since Mary’s never really figured out where the entrance to the garage is. There are other cars out front as well - between the resurrected hunters and their new allies, the bunker’s probably feeling pretty lively these days. Fortunately, a good chunk of the angels elect to stay outside.

Mary’s suspicions are borne out as soon as they get to the balcony above the atrium and start to walk down the stairs. Charlie and Dorothy are hunched over the map table, surrounded by wires and papers and complicated bits of machinery and looking sleep-deprived. Linda is pacing the floor behind them wearing a headset, and as Mary reaches the ground floor she barks “You want to be busted down to private, son? You let my people in there to inspect or I’ll make - yes, I know you’re in the Coast Guard! You want to be stuck in the Army for the rest of your life? Because they’re the only ones who will take you when I’m done!” She catches Mary’s expression and rolls her eyes, mouthing _”Civilians.”_

Mary shepherds her charges carefully past this scene of industry - Dorothy sees her and gives a tired wave, but Charlie doesn’t even look up - and into the library, which she figures will probably be the best place to leave them while she finds everyone.

Rufus, standing at the end of the table next to a frustrated-looking Kevin and a large stack of papers, takes one look at them and says “I’m guessing it’s time to find the others.”

“They beat us here?” Mary asks, keeping half of her attention on the angels, who mostly seem politely curious about the library’s contents. 

“Only by about twenty minutes,” Rufus says. “They’re getting cleaned up.” He gives each angel present a pointed look, and then very obviously puts an angel blade on the table in front of him and crosses his arms.

Well, that message is pretty unsubtle. Mary sighs. “I’ll go get them, I guess.” She glances over at Cas, who nods minutely. He’ll keep everything under control. Still, after Rufus’s obvious show of animosity, a goodwill gesture is probably in line. “Rebekah, do you or one of your angels want to come with me?”

Rebekah smiles a little and inclines her head. “I would be honored.”

Rufus scowls, but he can’t very well walk away from an entire room full of angels just to keep an eye on one.

“Sorry about that,” Mary says once they get to the hallway. “He’s… well, ‘paranoid’ and ‘crazy’ were the words Dean used.”

“And therefore very good at what he does, I would imagine,” Rebekah says mildly. “I understand what you all have had to survive, Mary. Caution is healthy, although I should warn you that I will not allow harm to come to any of my followers.”

“I understand.” Mary gets to the corner and hesitates just a second. Rufus had said ‘getting cleaned up’, which implied Dean and Sam would be in their rooms, but the kitchen is _right there_...

“Would you mind if I detoured for just a moment?” Mary says. “I want to say hi to my Mom.” Dorothy had said she was fine, when Mary had talked to her earlier, but hearing something secondhand and seeing it in person are two very different things.

“Of course,” Rebekah says graciously. “We no longer have all the time in the world, unfortunately, but there is certainly time enough for this.”

“Thanks,” Mary says, trying to parse this and eventually deciding to take it at face value. In any case, they’ve reached the kitchen and she has more important things to focus on.

She sticks her head in before entering fully, just in case her mother’s not there, but Deanna is indeed standing over by the sink. She’s washing dishes, sort of; the water’s running and she’s got a plate in her hands, but she’s just staring down into the soap suds. Mary can’t fully see her face, but the set of her shoulders makes her look tired and worn.

The kitchen is so spotless it almost hurts to look at. Mary feels guilty about even walking on the floor. “Mom?”

As soon as she hears Mary’s voice, she straightens up and turns with a smile on her face. “Mary! I didn’t know you were back, sweetheart. How was your trip?”

“It was good,” Mary says, responding instinctively to her mother’s outstretched arms. God, she’d missed these hugs so much. No one hugged like her mom did, cradling you close like you were precious. “Um, this is Rebekah. She’s an angel.”

“Oh!” Deanna smooths down her apron and holds out a hand in welcome, subtly putting herself between Rebekah and Mary at the same time. Mary hides a rueful sigh - some things never change, apparently. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

If Rebekah picks up on Deanna’s ulterior motives, she doesn’t let on. “I appreciate making your acquaintance as well. Your daughter is possessed of an exceptional soul.”

Cas had said almost the exact same thing about Dean and Sam, once, and Mary’s abruptly thrown back to that half-burned house when she was still wearing a nightie and Cas was still a crazy homeless guy with a weird name. Simpler times, though she wouldn’t have guessed it then.

“Yes, she is,” Deanna says, beaming proudly. Mary feels herself blush furiously.

“Um, anyway, Mom, we’ve got to find the boys, I just wanted to stop in and say hi. Have you seen them?”

“Down in their rooms,” Deanna says, definitely amused. “Do you kids need some snacks?”

Really? Right in front of the leader of their rebel angel allies? “ _Mom,_ we’re representatives from three different species discussing an alliance, we’re not kids.”

Deanna bursts out laughing. Dammit, she’d fallen right into it like she was still a teenager.

Mary makes a face at her. “Yes, please, we’d like some snacks.”

“All right, I’ll bring them up to the library,” Deanna says, still laughing.

“I like your mother,” Rebekah says once they’re in the hallway. “She has a fierce soul.”

“You’re not wrong,” Mary says, smiling a little. “Hey, Rebekah, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Rebekah says, coming to a stop so she can give Mary her full attention. It’s a little uncomfortable, actually. Rebekah doesn’t do Cas’s laser stare, exactly, but it’s no less intense. 

“The way Cas’s Grace is now… what does that mean for him? Is it dangerous?”

“Ah.” Rebekah looks away, marshalling her thoughts. “It’s difficult to say exactly,” she says, after a pause to think. “There’s no precedent for it that I know of, so I can’t answer based on experience. As a Rit Zien, I can tell you that I am able to sense pain from him and a creeping weakness inside. I don’t know what it means, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s getting worse.”

“Will it kill him?” Mary asks numbly. She doesn’t like the sound of ‘creeping weakness’, not least because it’s so unspecific.

Rebekah shakes her head. “I can’t say. It seems to be moving slowly and the Grace itself is very depleted, so I think he would start to display signs of illness before there was any grave danger. I’m sorry, Mary - Grace is not meant to be used in such a fashion. I’m surprised that he was even able to do what he did.”

Mary stares at her. “He did it for me,” she says, horrified.

“Then perhaps I am not quite as surprised,” Rebekah says gently. “There is little that Castiel would not do for you and your family, Mary.”

Mary takes a steadying breath. “I thought you didn’t know him before.”

Rebekah shrugs. “Everyone knows that,” she says simply. “When Castiel is powerful, harming the Winchesters is the one thing that you absolutely must not do. When he is vulnerable, it is often the only way he can be controlled.”

Mary stares at her.

“I don’t approve of it, Mary,” Rebekah says urgently, putting a hand on Mary’s arm. “I only know it has happened. And it is both his weakness _and_ his strength. It may have made him easy to manipulate, but it has also allowed him to overcome things no other angel could even think to resist. Naomi’s most oppressive conditioning amounted to nothing when pitted against a threat to your sons’ safety.”

Mary nods, forcing herself to set aside her feelings and focus. “Did you work with Naomi?”

“ _No,”_ Rebekah says, appalled. “I would never - _no._ But I saw… the aftermath of her work, once or twice, and word spread amongst us when Castiel prevailed. It was forbidden, it was subversive, but it brought us hope, and so no matter what Naomi did to cover the incident up, everyone knew.” She touches the side of Mary’s jaw, a light brush of fingers that’s more of a caress than anything. “We have failed you, Mary, you and yours, and we know that. We would put it right if we could. That is why we have taken this chance.”

Mary nods, trying to sort out what kind of response she should be giving. Thank you? Yes, I’ve noticed the screw-up? 

“We’re all screw-ups here, really,” she says finally, which doesn’t have much poetry to it but at least it’s heartfelt.

Rebekah smiles a little, relieved, but she’s prevented from making any reply by Sam’s appearance in the hallway, his hair still damp from his shower.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, giving Rebekah a curious look.

Dean comes out of his own room a little further down the hall, pulling on a clean overshirt. “All right, let’s grab the Hell contingent and get this show on the road. Hey, Mom.”

Mary pushes her conversation with Rebekah to the back of her mind and gives both of her boys hugs. “Sam, Dean, this is Rebekah. Crowley’s an entire contingent now?” He sure has enough personality for more than one demon. The jerk.

Dean scowls, and Sam sighs. “About that,” he says. “We picked up one of his lieutenants on the way back. They’re both in the dungeon right now until we’re ready to meet.”

Mary eyes their body language. They both look irritated, but also oddly guilty. “You know the lieutenant?”

“Sort of.” Dean grimaces. “We knew her before her deal came due. She used to be a thief and a con artist, Bela Talbot. Enough years in Hell, and now…” he shrugs.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Mary asks.

Dean’s eyes flick over to Rebekah. “Nah, we’re good.”

So - maybe, maybe not. About as good as they can hope for, probably. “All right. Let’s go collect them.”

By the time they get back to the library with a posturing Crowley and a silent Bela in tow, Charlie and Dorothy have joined the group and Deanna is passing around plates of snacks. Pastor Jim and Caleb, who’d been on guard duty, silently settle in at the back of the room by a group of angels. Mary spares a moment to wonder how Pastor Jim’s doing with this situation, faith-wise, but there isn’t much time to consider it. She doesn’t know him well enough to read his expression.

Rebekah sits down at the table next to Cas and folds her hands in front of her. “How shall we begin?”

Dean leans forward, taking charge. “Charlie, give us an update on the virus?”

Mary settles herself against a bookshelf, closer to the table than the group by Pastor Jim but far enough back that she can see everyone pretty clearly. She’s not expecting to be a big part of this conversation, and she’s a little too rattled by her conversation with Rebekah to concentrate fully, but she’s very curious to see what everyone’s reactions are. After a moment, Deanna settles in next to her.

Charlie, clutching a coffee mug and with her hair tied back in what appears to be a binder clip, nods and pokes her tablet. “It’s not great, but a lot better than I would have thought. With the extra hunters we’ve been able to slow the spread of the virus a lot - we’re still getting outbreaks, but we’ve mostly been able to contain it when it shows. Boston’s been the trickiest, because the CDC and the National Guard have been freaking out, but Victor’s got it more or less under control. The danger there is less that the virus will spread and more that the military will just start shooting people. They’re getting really twitchy and telling them the truth probably isn’t going to help.”

“And sooner or later they’re going to realise it’s a country-wide problem,” Sam says heavily. “What about internationally?”

“Harder to say,” Charlie says, poking furiously at her tablet. “To be honest, I’ve got so much to keep track of here that I haven’t really been able to look into it. I’m seeing some hinky stuff in Toronto and - ooh, Madrid - but it’s hard to say. If I had to guess I’d say Abaddon’s focusing on us first and then she’ll expand from here.”

“Anything to add, Crowley?” Dean asks, giving Crowley a challenging look.

Crowley responds with a lazy smirk. Mary fights off the urge to throw something at him. From the way he’s glaring, Kevin would probably join in. “Viruses aren’t really my style.”

“You’re telling me you don’t have a source in Abaddon’s camp?” Sam says skeptically.

“That will be me, once we’re done here,” Bela says. Her voice is smooth and cultured, but her expression gives nothing away. “I’ve got an in with someone in her research division.”

“You sure you’re up for undercover work?” Dean asks, which Mary is pretty sure is just a thin cover for ‘how can we trust you’.

Bela comes to the same conclusion, apparently, because she gives Dean a patently false smile and says condescendingly, “I may be a demon now, but I was human once. I don’t want to see you all get killed off any more than you want to die.”

“Fair enough,” Sam says quickly before the situation can deteriorate. “Rebekah, do you or your people know anything about the virus?”

Rebekah tilts her head, considering this. She hasn’t looked in Crowley and Bela’s direction once since they sat down and doesn’t seem inclined to try. “We know how it has been used in the past, but it’s not something that was ever intended for angels. Before the Fall we might have been able to banish it directly, but I’m afraid as we are now we will be of little use in this area.”

“You said you’re a Rit Zien,” Mary pipes up. “Can you heal it at all?”

“Perhaps if I caught it early enough, in the time between infection and the appearance of symptoms,” Rebekah says thoughtfully, turning in her seat so she can see Mary more easily. “I cannot say for certain.”

“So, basically no,” Dean sighs. “Okay. Kevin, you get anywhere with the tablet research? Maybe we can find some way to juice up the angels.”

Kevin takes a break from trying to set fire to Crowley with his mind and shakes his head, frustrated. “I can’t make any sense of my notes. Maybe if I had the angel tablet, but as it is now, I’ve got nothing.”

“In any case, you would also need a prophet of the Lord,” Rebekah says.

“We got one,” Dean says, jerking a thumb in Kevin’s direction.

Rebekah frowns. “The boy is not a prophet.”

“Yes, I am,” Kevin snaps. “Trust me, I’ve really thoroughly learned that by now, okay?”

“She’s right,” Cas says, surprised. He’s giving Kevin one of his laser-eye stares. “Intellectually I know Kevin is a prophet, but I can’t feel anything from him. As soon as they walked in every angel here should have immediately sensed what he was.”

“Well, he did die,” Sam suggests, looking nervously from Cas to Kevin and back again. “Maybe it just passed on to the next person. Who would that be? Maybe we can find him. Or her.”

“It’s…” Cas’s voice trails off. He looks shaken. “I don’t know. I should know that.” He glances beseechingly at Mary. For some reason, this gap in his memory seems to spook him more than the others have, although Mary’s not sure why.

“Hang on, Cas, stow the panic,” Dean says before Mary can figure out what to do. “Rebekah, name the prophets for me.”

Rebekah starts to speak and then stops, looking startled. “I can’t.”

“So,” Dean says, leaning back in his chair. “By any chance does Metatron currently have access to a big red de-prophetifying button?”

Cas and Rebekah trade sickened looks. “He wouldn’t,” Rebekah says hopelessly. “No angel would.”

“He would,” Cas says grimly. “I don’t claim to understand him well, but he would definitely do this. He must have been truly worried that something in the tablets could undo his plans. And unfortunately he’s very thoroughly destroyed any chance of us finding out what that might be.”

“Well, that’s frigging fantastic,” Kevin says bitterly. He throws down his pen and stomps out of the library. Sam and Dean look at each other guiltily.

“Gosh, I’ve missed your drama,” Crowley says nostalgically, smiling. “He’s so adorable when he’s useless.”

“Oh, shut up, how does that help?” Bela snaps. Crowley gives her a dirty look and falls silent.

“So I guess the next problem is the battles going on,” Sam says, staring incredulously at Crowley. “What do we know about the factions at this point?”

Rebekah sighs and clasps her hands tightly on the table. “I can speak of Bartholomew’s practices. Would anyone volunteer to report on Malachi?”

There’s a pause, and then a dark-haired angel hesitantly raises her hand. Rebekah inclines her head. “Thank you, Hannah.” She turns back to the group around the table. “Bartholomew truly believes that he is the last righteous angel and it is his divine duty to lead his brethren in the correct manner, and as time passes he is getting more and more fanatical. His methods are becoming more extreme as well. Many of his followers believe as he does, but some have been forced to swear allegiance as he tries to build his army.” She gestures at the angels around her. “Those you see here are the courageous ones, and I do believe that as time passes and word spreads more will come.”

“Enough to make a difference?” Dean asks.

Rebekah shrugs. “To us, perhaps.”

Mary keeps an eye on the angels throughout Rebekah’s speech. Most are impassive, but she sees a few unhappy faces when Rebekah talks about the enforced conscription and several of them stand a little taller when she calls them brave.

“Okay,” Sam says, his smile a little forced. “Thank you, that’s very helpful. Hannah, can you tell us anything about Malachi?”

Hannah tips her chin up and squares her shoulders. “Malachi is fanatical as well, but in a different way. He blames Bartholomew and the other traditionalists for bringing us to this ruin with their inflexibility and he believes the only way to regain Heaven and our divinity is through force. He cares little for the plight of humanity beyond its usefulness to his goals and the fate of angels who oppose him means nothing to him.” She wavers for a moment, and then clasps her hands tightly behind her back, her chin going up again. “You do not have to worry about our loyalty to your cause. We have betrayed Malachi and he will kill us if we try to return to him.”

“Thank you, Hannah,” Rebekah says gently. One of the angels next to her puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and she relaxes a little bit.

“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Dean says. “These two chuckleheads are going to fight to the last man, no matter who they trash in the meantime or if there are actual Hellhounds at their gates?”

The angels all nod. “That is accurate,” Rebekah says. “Those angels - the ones doing this willingly - they have drifted far from what we should be. That is not an excuse, there’s no excuse for it, but…” she gestures helplessly. “You have my apology, regardless.”

The humans around the table nod awkwardly. Cas stares down at his hands. Crowley appears to be playing tic-tac-toe with himself by scratching a hashmark into the library table with a ballpoint pen like a bored high schooler.

“What about Muriel?” Mary asks.

“Muriel?” Rebekah says, surprised. “She’s a fairly low-ranking archivist, I think. As far as I know she’s been able to stay out of the fighting. What about her?”

“She’s gathering followers,” Gagiel says, shoulders hunching defensively when everyone turns their attention to him. “I’m not sure why. There was a friend of hers in Malachi’s ranks and he tried to talk to me once, but as soon as I said that I liked it on Earth he left.”

“Wearing a silver necklace?” Mary asks.

“Yes,” Gagiel says, surprised. “With one of the Four Pillars on it, I think, but that’s not unusual. Why do you ask?”

“We think they’ve taken it on as a symbol,” Sam says quickly. “We don’t really know much about them either. Rebekah, would you and Hannah be willing to go over the intel Charlie’s gathered and see if you can add anything?”

“Of course,” Rebekah says.

“So, on to the demons,” Dean says briskly, and throws a pen cap at Crowley. “Pay attention, that means you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Crowley says, blinking up at them innocently. “Were we done with the virtuous woe-is-me lovefest? I tuned out when no one actually took off their shirts and started flagellating.”

“Anything you can tell us about Abaddon?” Dean says with exaggerated patience.

“In that vessel? I’d say she’s an eight. Maybe a seven, given the megalomania and the anger issues.”

“Crowley.” Bela says. She doesn’t look at him but her voice is hard.

Crowley crosses his arms, irritated. “Fine. Abaddon has no finesse, no vision, and no restraint, which unfortunately makes her an attractive prospect to some of Hell’s less clever residents. _I_ brought order and an increase in soul acquisition, but apparently prosperity and success are considered boring these days.”

“Right, but if you could keep talking about Abaddon,” Dean says pointedly.

“What does she think is going to happen, I ask you?” Crowley says, starting to get worked up. “Take over the Earth? Great, but then where do the souls come from once the little humans are all dead or slaves? If they become martyrs, their souls go to Heaven. _Temptation_ is the key, not widespread indiscriminate orgiastic violence. It’s a basic agricultural model - you don’t salt and burn the fields if you want to keep getting crops, you have to nurture -”

Bela pins him with a look. Crowley subsides immediately, and Mary feels her eyebrows raise.

“She’s bad even for a demon,” he says in a more measured tone, staring Bela down. “The reason this whole Heaven-Earth-Hell setup has worked for this long is because there were controls in place and nobody got greedy. Abaddon’s thrown all that out the window and if she isn’t stopped soon she could tip the entire balance out of whack.” He looks away from Bela, finally, to take in the rest of them. “The good news is that none of her lieutenants right now are strong enough to hold this mess together if she bites it. The bad news is we can’t kill her because Pouty Lips here got _squeamish.”_

“So how badly is she kicking your ass?” Sam asks, grabbing Dean’s shoulder when he looks like he’s going to go for Crowley.

Crolwey glares. 

“Very badly,” Bela says in a bored tone. “Demons follow the strongest leader and the one that will give them what they want. Shockingly, they don’t care much about impressive end-of-year returns and shiny PowerPoint presentations when they can go around killing uppity humans instead.”

“Should’ve closed up Hell when we had the chance,” Sam mutters, and holds up his hands defensively when Dean glares at him. “I’m not going to try again, I’m just saying it would have solved a lot of problems.”

“It’s only _caused_ problems on my end,” Crowley says sourly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary helps her mother clear up the snacks after the meeting dissolves, joined by a few of the angels and, surprisingly, Bela.

“I liked the apple slices,” Bela says, rolling her eyes when Mary looks at her askance.

“The trick is to toss them with a little bit of lemon juice to keep them from going brown,” Deanna says. She’s perfectly cordial, but she keeps herself in front of Mary again. “Mary, would you mind tidying this up? I’d like to go check on Kevin.”

“Of course,” Mary says. She’s surprised for a moment, but then realises that Linda had been in the atrium running the communications array during the meeting and wouldn’t know what has happened. “Want me to tell his mom?”

Deanna considers this and then shakes her head. “He doesn’t like to worry her. This whole trouble with his prophet powers has been upsetting him.” She glances over at Bela, who has deposited her share of the plates in the sink and is rewarding herself with more apple slices. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” Mary says. “Go check on Kevin.”

She busies herself with tidying up while the angels finish their tasks and fade away upstairs. Finally, it’s only Mary and Bela left in the kitchen.

Bela doesn’t look at all taken aback as Mary sits down across from her. “I thought I saw you watching from the back of the room.”

Mary helps herself to an apple slice. “Interesting dynamic you’ve got going with Crowley.”

Bela shrugs. “It’s mutually beneficial, for the moment.”

Mary considers this. Dean and Sam had seemed surprised by Bela’s presence, which means they hadn’t known of her as one of Hell’s power players. Their intel on Hell’s inner workings is hardly all-encompassing, of course, but it seems weird that if Crowley had been in the dungeon for all that time her name never would have come up. And what could Crowley need from a former thief and con artist with apparently unimpressive demonic power? The Blade of Cain is useless without the Mark, and the tablets are useless without prophets, so there’s no point in stealing them. 

“You get some of the perks of the King of Hell title,” Mary guesses, “and he gets your con expertise?”

Bela smiles slowly, so Mary keeps going. “Crowley’s already good at making deals, so I don’t think he needs help conning anyone. Makes me wonder what he has to conceal.”

Bela’s smile grows. Mary tilts her head to the side. “What does it do to a demon to be involved in the last trial to close Hell?”

Bela sits back, satisfied. “Crowley’s right, it’s too bad the boys didn’t get your brains.” She bites an apple slice in half with satisfaction. “The answer is: nothing good. The last trial involved curing a demon and little Sammy nearly got all the way there before backing out. What Crowley gets from me is subterfuge and a touch of demonic power, because he might have the title but he doesn’t have the juice any more.”

Well, that’s a bit of new information and no mistake. “What’s he going to do if we manage to take out Abaddon? Can he re-demon up?”

Bela shrugs, unconcerned. “If he wants to go through the decades of torture and hope no one takes advantage of his weakened state, sure. But my guess is he’ll do what we all do - just keep the con going for as long as he can.” She winks at Mary, getting to her feet. “That’s a freebie for you. Go humanity and all that.” She gives the air a sarcastic victory punch as she saunters out.

Mary sits in the kitchen for nearly an hour after Bela’s left, just thinking. She wasn’t lying when she told Cas before that the opportunity for the two of them to take a backseat was a rare one - so much has been happening so quickly that it’s easy to lose a lot of the details. It’s nice to have a little bit of time to just sort through everything she’s learned and try to fit the pieces together.

It’s not a terribly comforting pattern, unfortunately. She’s glad that they’re apparently holding their own against the virus at the moment, but she’s worried about the damage that the demonic and angelic side battles can cause in the meantime, and it annoys her that they have no idea what Metatron’s up to. For a being with so much potential power, it seems suspicious that he’s not actually _doing_ anything. Maybe Cas was right, and now that he’s gotten what he wanted he’s just going to sit back and enjoy it and not care about what happens on Earth. That’s probably the best they can hope for.

Eventually, she gets up and goes to check on the others. She finds her mother in the library - talking to Crowley, which she doesn’t like, but Deanna’s standing next to Kevin and gives Mary a _can you believe this guy_ eyeroll when she notices her, so Mary smiles back and moves on. She’s glad Deanna and Kevin have become friendly. 

The atrium is at its usual level of activity, worse than before because Charlie’s been joined by Dean and Rufus and an earnestly helpful coterie of angels that are damn near blocking the entire table from view. Dorothy’s standing by the wall, watching the scene with an expression that’s half amusement and half exasperation.

“You get kicked out of the strategy session?” Mary asks, pausing in her rounds.

“Believe me, I’m not complaining,” Dorothy says with a little laugh. “I mean, it’s interesting to hear their perspective and everything, but strategy’s not exactly my favorite. I’m better at the action stuff.”

“Going a little crazy all cooped up in here?” Mary asks sympathetically. She understands Dorothy’s frustration - sitting back and planning from a distance can feel seriously limiting when you’re used to being in the thick of it.

“A little bit,” Dorothy says dryly. “Maybe with all the new help I’ll be able to wrangle a field trip. It would be helpful, you know, eyes on the ground,” she adds, a little defensively.

“Hey, army generals go out in the field all the time,” Mary points out. “Look, it’s a little off-topic, but is my Mom okay? She seemed a little sad, earlier.”

Dorothy shrugs. “She’s coping, but she’s frustrated. Getting stuck in the future is weird enough without landing in the End Times to boot, and she’s like me - we’re far enough out of step to feel pretty useless a lot of the time. I can help with the strategy, at least up to a point, and Deanna can take care of the people here, but none of it’s what we really want to be doing.” She gives Mary a smile. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. We’ll both be fine.”

“All right,” Mary says, moderately reassured. She’ll make sure to catch up with Deanna later when she’s not in the middle of something. “Thank you, Dorothy - you’re a good friend. Have you seen Cas and Sam at all?”

“I think Sam went outside. Cas is lurking on the stairway,” Dorothy says, jerking her head in the right direction. Now that she looks, Mary can see the lighter color of Cas’s overcoat through the wrought iron of the stairs up to the catwalk.

She leaves Dorothy to her observation and goes up to sit down next to Cas. It’s a little bit of a tight fit, hip-to-hip, but he leans into her just a little bit so it was probably a good choice.

From here she can see the whole atrium and a sliver of the library. As she watches, Dean drags Crowley out of the library and over to the map table, which makes Mary smile. “What’s up, kiddo?”

“I’m just… taking a moment. Thinking,” Cas says. “I’ve asked Sam to speak to the angels and find any with knowledge of sigils or Old Enochian. Most of Rebekah’s followers are what you’d think of as noncombatants, so it’s possible they have some useful knowledge.”

“This for your… secret plan?” Mary asks, even though she’d sort of promised not to pry.

Cas shrugs. “It may wind up being multi-purpose. In the short term, I’d like to see if we can come up with anything useful for the teams out in the field.”

Mary nods. “Look, Cas… I talked to Rebekah a little bit. How bad is your Grace right now?”

Cas stills. “It’s… worse than before,” he says finally. “It’s still manageable, there’s no danger, but after the resurrection spell it’s been coming back… differently.”

Mary shakes her head, frustrated. “I wish you’d told me.”

“I know,” Cas says reluctantly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry anyone, and it’s just, it’s just a little more uncomfortable, it’s not _bad._ And I can still use it.”

Mary gives him an eloquent look.

“But I won’t. Use it.” Cas says, shoulders slumping.

Mary sighs. “Look, Cas, I know you don’t want to worry me, but I’m going to be _more_ worried if I know you’re keeping things from me. Do you understand?”

Cas nods, staring at his feet. “I understand.”

“Okay.” She feels a little bad for going after him, but it’s got to be said. “There’s something else, too. Rebekah said that you have a history of doing… extraordinary things for the boys. And for me.”

Cas tips his head back, smiling wryly. “I suppose that’s one way to put it.”

“Just… as you figure out your plan, be careful?” Mary asks.

Cas gives her a surprised look.

“What I mean,” Mary says, “is that if the plan hurts you it’s no good to me, Cas. Okay?”

Cas bites his lip. “I’ll do my best to minimize the damage,” he says finally.

That’s probably the best she’s going to get. “Okay,” she says, tucking her arm through his. He sighs and leans his head against hers. “Okay.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_”Hello, Mary.”_

_Why is it always when she’s particularly tired? Mary sighs. With everything that has been going on all day, she’d been surprised to get to bed as early as she had. Hell, she’d been surprised to have a room to herself, given how overcrowded the bunker will be until the angels ship out in the morning._

_Still, duty calls. Mary sits up and leans against the headboard. “Hey, Muriel, what’s up.”_

_Muriel looks up at the ceiling with a frown. Mary resists the urge to sigh again. “Never mind. I meant what’s happening?”_

_“Oh.” Muriel refocuses on her. She’s sitting on Mary’s dream-desk again, her feet on the seat of the desk chair and her back primly straight. “I am appearing to you in a dream.”_

_Mary gives up completely. “Yes, I see that.”_

_“You have spoken to the angels.”_

_There doesn’t seem to be much point in denying it, not when Muriel sounds so sure. It answers the constant nagging_ is Cain watching us right now _question, too, hooray. “Yup. Sure did.”_

_“Do you see what I mean, now?” Muriel says, leaning forward adamantly. “So few of them joined you. So few care for this world or its inhabitants. Do you understand what they will allow to happen to you? To your friends, your children? To Castiel? They will let this world slide into chaos and blood and flame and they will not care as long as they think they might still retake Heaven. Do you see why it is kinder to end things now?”_

_Her expression is pinched, almost desperate in its intensity. Mary finds herself shrinking back ever so slightly._

_“No,” she says as calmly as possible. “I don’t agree with you.”_

_Muriel’s expression blanks immediately. It’s incredibly creepy to watch. “So be it. I have tried words. I’m sorry, Mary.”_

_“What?” Mary says, unnerved. “What do you mean, ‘sor-’”_

_the demons overrun the world and the virus comes with them. there is nowhere to hide. nothing is safe. half the hunters sell out for protection. no one can be trusted. ellen leads abaddon to the bunker in exchange for jo’s safety and they die screaming as the demons cut down everyone inside. mary escapes with dean and sam when castiel gives his life to protect them and the last time mary sees the bunker’s door it is painted in his blood. they run and run but there is nowhere to run to. the angels do not listen when they beg for help, too caught up in their own battles. the world twists and warps from their fight. mary grabs her sons and runs but sam is torn from her by the infected and they rip into him. mary screams and sobs as she drags dean away but they aren’t fast enough and dean is taken from her too and then mary is alone all alone -_

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes screaming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I totally wrote the thing about how ‘the angels turning Cas into The Chosen One never ends well’ before 9x22 aired. CALLED IT. Poor Cas. :(


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: I’m pretty sure Presidential powers don’t work like this. What can I say, I’m mostly getting my information from disaster movies. I also cast some aspersions on Australia in this chapter, but I assure you that I do it with all the love in my heart.  
> SPOILERS: 6x16 ‘...And Then There Were None’, 7x17 ‘The Born-Again Identity’, 8x21 ‘The Great Escapist’, minor spoilers for the Season 9 finale in the End Notes.  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: ancient Egyptian magic, port cities on the East Coast, driving routes, Enochian angel names, original _Star Trek_ episodes, Australian wildlife, the history of: science fiction, arcade games, and cold medicine.  
>  NEW TAGS: None  
> NOTES: This was the chapter that _would not end_ , and then it was the chapter that would not end the way I wanted it to, so I had to spend some time fussing with it. I’m sorry it took so long! I had wanted to get it done a lot closer to the Season 9 finale than I did.
> 
> On a much more awesome note, the amazing [tales-at-dusk](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/) has illustrated the Chapter 6 scene of Cas and Mary in the motel room with Cas's alchemy research! You can admire it [here](http://tales-at-dusk.tumblr.com/post/86149266088). :D

Mary wakes screaming. There’s someone holding her down and she strikes out automatically, twisting and flailing so they can’t get a good grip on her.

“Mom! Mom, it’s okay, it’s just m- _ow goddammit_ -”

She bites down hard on her assailant’s arm a second before his words penetrate the adrenalized post-nightmare fog in her head. “Dean?”

“Yeah. You okay?” He straightens up cautiously, rubbing his arm.

She collapses back onto her pillow and scrubs her face with her hands, the blood-soaked landscape of Muriel’s illusion fading into the dimly-lit but familiar contours of her room at the bunker. It’s okay - Dean’s right there, he’s alive, and if she wants to she can step out of her room and find Sam and Cas and they’ll be fine too. Her heart can stop pounding _any_ time now.

“Ugh. Bad dream. Sorry.”

“Looked like a humdinger,” he says, watching her carefully. “That’s your second in the past few days.”

Technically, it’s only her second _screaming_ nightmare. It’s been four days since Muriel gave up on reasoned arguments as a form of persuasion, and Mary’s been having at least one nightmare a night since. She really wonders what Muriel thinks is going to happen if Mary dies of sleep deprivation before she cracks and says yes.

“Well, end of the world and all that,” she says dismissively instead, pushing herself up to lean against the headboard. “I guess a few nightmares were to be expected. I’m sorry I woke you. Did I hurt you?”

“Nah.” He leans on one hand and regards her seriously. “Lucifer used to screw with Sammy, too, when he was angling to wear him to the prom.”

Dammit. Mary sighs, and Dean nods. “Thought so. You talked to Cas about it?”

Mary shakes her head. Cas has spent most of the past four days in the library, riding herd on a motley collection of hunters and angels as they pore through the Men of Letters’ angel lore and Pastor Jim’s smoke-scented research materials, a process made more fraught by the angels’ aversion to Cas’s Grace and by Cas’s insistence on flying in the face of literally eons of angelic scholarly tradition. The Free Will Army (Charlie’s name, Dean’s suggestion of ‘Collectively Boned’ was voted down) is staying ahead of the virus, just barely, and only by managing to quarantine outbreaks as quickly as possible. But they’re stretched thin enough that they’re having to ignore all of the angel-demon battles going on around them and the military is getting progressively more suspicious of the impeccably (if unprovably) credentialled teams that always seem to be a step ahead of them and then won’t share any information. They’ve already had two hunter teams have to beat hasty retreats to avoid being arrested, and it was really only due to lucky breaks that they escaped at all. Cas and the research team are frantically trying to find something - anything - that will let them get ahead of the stalemate before they’re simply overwhelmed.

Mary glances over at Dean. He’s wearing rumpled jeans and yesterday’s shirt, which tells her that instead of sleeping he’s been grabbing a fully-clothed catnap, but his expression is steady and calm. She wavers for a moment. She vividly remembers his fear when he’d thought his vision of 2014 was going to come true, but this is an area he has some experience in and it’s not like she’s got anyone else to talk to right now. 

“I asked Cas if there was a way to keep angels out of dreams, but I said it was because I was worried about Muriel seeing something she wasn’t supposed to,” she says finally. “He said she couldn’t snoop if I didn’t want her to, but if I was really worried he thought there might be a way to put me into a coma for a while and then take me back out again.” She’d interrupted a screaming fight in Enochian between him and Aaoxaif to get that much, too.

Dean makes a face. Mary hadn’t been keen on giving up the ability to regain consciousness under her own power either, not to mention that it would inevitably mean Cas using his Grace. _That_ she’s willing to do a lot of things to avoid. “Did you and Sam ever come up with anything useful to keep Lucifer out?”

“Institutionalization?” Dean says, and he probably wants it to come off as insouciant but it’s just bitter. “Actually, that was later and it didn’t work. Eventually Cas just absorbed the crazy out of him and fixed him that way.”

“Absorbed it?” Mary asks, eyebrows raised. Every time she thinks she’s got a handle on angelic powers…

“And then went crazy himself!” Dean says in a falsely cheerful voice. “Trust me, you haven’t seen weird until you’ve babysat a crazy angel.”

“I can imagine,” Mary says. She’d gotten a taste of it when Cas had been out of his head with a fever, and he’d been human then. He’d still covered an entire room with angel magic.

“Fun times.” He actually looks a little bit sad about, although she’s not sure if it’s a longing for simpler times or just because something awful happened at the end to snap Cas back to sanity. Frankly, she’s a little wary of asking.

“Heard anything from the others?” she asks, partly to distract him but mostly because she does actually want to know. After the human-angel-demon summit - and, okay, she can sort of understand why Charlie insisted on an easier name - most of the angels had shipped out, followed by a few teams of hunters. Deanna had elected to go with Dorothy on her front-lines patrol, which Mary wasn’t enthusiastic about, but her mother had looked so animated when the possibility had come up that she didn’t have the heart to ask her to stay. And besides, how can she expect Deanna to adjust to modern life if she never gets to experience it?

At least she’d managed to convince them to take a car instead of Dorothy’s motorcycle. The motorcycle might have style and be more maneuverable, but a car can provide actual shelter if need be.

Dean shifts around until he’s leaning against the foot of her bed, facing her. She scoots to one side so he can stretch out his legs a bit and he nudges her hip with his foot in thanks. “Kevin and Rufus checked in with Annie Hawkins and Tracy Bell in Yankton and then they left to go on a scouting mission. Annie doesn’t seem to think it should get too hairy, they’re just chasing down some rumours.” 

That had been a fun argument - Linda Tran had _not_ been keen on letting her son out into the wild. Mary’s pretty sure it was only the edge of desperation in Kevin’s voice when he said he felt useless in the bunker that made her agree. Well, and the impressively nasty threats she’d made to Rufus, should her son not come back completely unharmed and in a sound frame of mind. It had probably also helped that Dean and Sam both still feel so guilty about Kevin’s death that they’d been willing to give him any supplies he asked for without complaint. Honestly, Mary’s still surprised he managed to get out of the bunker without a full honor guard.

She puts her hand on Dean’s ankle and gives him a comforting squeeze. “He’ll be okay, kiddo. Rufus is a good hunter, right?”

“Up until he got killed, anyway,” Dean says dryly, and his mouth twists. “To be fair, not many people would have seen that one coming, though.”

Mary nods, letting a beat of silence fall in case Dean wants to discuss it further, but he doesn’t take advantage of it so she moves on. “How are _you_ sleeping, sweetheart?”

He grins at her, all cockiness and bravado. “Well, I’m not saying it wouldn’t be better if I had a little comp-” his smile falters. “Oh, man. I can’t say that in front of my mom.”

Mary snorts at his dismayed expression. “So, pretty bad, huh?”

He shrugs. “Better than the last time we tried to stop an Apocalypse.”

“Fair enough.” She pats his leg. “All right, I’m going to go get breakfast started. Are you going to try and get some more sleep?”

He shakes his head. “I’m up now. I’ll give you a hand.”

They’ve fallen into a rhythm in the last few days, based as much on their particular strengths as it is on the necessities of their situation. Charlie and Linda take charge of communications and the map table during the day, and then when Charlie can finally be pried away from it and packed off to bed at night Caleb and Hannah take over. Cas and the research team - made up of himself, Sam, Pastor Jim, and the angels Aaoxaif and Gagiel - work more or less nonstop, taking breaks only for meals and when one or another of them passes out for a few hours in one of the library armchairs. Or, in Sam’s case, stretched out full-length under one of the tables.

Dean is probably the busiest of them all, dividing his time between mediating for the researchers, monitoring the numerous-and-growing field teams and coordinating the ever-expanding web of lies that keeps them all from being thrown in jail, and helping Mary remind everyone to stop and eat occasionally. Mary would object to the last one, since he’s run off his feet as it is, but he seems to find it calming. Since she’s only had a limited amount of success with getting him to take breaks or get enough sleep, she’s willing to take the victories she can get.

For her part, Mary spends most of her free time stockpiling food and weapons in various locations around the bunker. She hasn’t explicitly told anyone that she’s doing it in case something goes horribly wrong, but the long look Dean gives her the second time he finds her with an armful of antique Men of Letters scimitars and khukuris in one of the archive rooms makes her think he’s got some pretty spot-on suspicions. She doesn’t know if Cas’s doomsday plan - assuming it even exists yet - involves using the bunker as a stronghold, but it seems like a logical conclusion. Besides, it’s something to do.

She’s a little surprised that Dean’s been as patient as he is with staying in the bunker and off the front lines, even if he is in the thick of the planning side with Charlie and Mrs. Tran, but she suspects it’s because his fear of leaving them unguarded is greater than his boredom. She doesn’t like the implications of that, but she can’t say she isn’t glad to have him close at hand too.

She and Dean make breakfast in companionable silence, interrupted only by Charlie who wanders in, is presented with a cup of coffee, and then collapses with her head down on the kitchen table while the coffee goes cold next to her. After a moment Dean takes off his overshirt and puts it around her shoulders, and then goes back to making eggs.

By the time breakfast is made Charlie has more or less regained consciousness and been joined by Pastor Jim, who looks just as exhausted.

“An hour of sleep a night not cutting it any more?” Dean teases him, pouring coffee.

“Actually, Caleb bullied me into bed at about three,” Jim says, massaging the back of his neck and wincing when something makes a popping noise. “But no, it wasn’t anywhere near enough.”

“Is Cas driving you that hard?” Mary asks, frowning. “I could talk to him.”

“It’s not Castiel,” Jim says, downing most of the coffee in one long, impossible gulp. “We want to do this just as much as he does. I’m not ashamed to say that I feel thoroughly out of my depth, though. Some of the theories we’re playing with…” he shakes his head. “Well. It’s stuff I never would have tried myself, that’s for sure.”

“Dangerous?” Dean asks, frowning.

Jim shakes his head. “No. Well, not inherently. As theory it’s harmless, although I’d suggest finding somewhere remote for testing, just in case.”

“Do you think you’re getting close to something usable?” Mary asks, intrigued. The last time she’d wandered through the library and been able to understand any of the conversation it had been about something called oracular amuletic decrees, which had prompted a heated discussion amongst the angels about whether or not ancient Egyptian humans could possibly have known anything helpful if they were human (Aaoxaif’s objection) and pagans (Gagiel’s). Jim had mostly been ignoring the conversation, focusing on his own work instead. Sam had been frantically taking notes.

Jim shrugs. “Some of it, maybe. Some of it has a ways to go still, and some of it will be impossible to test in controlled conditions.”

Dean catches Mary’s eye and makes a face. _Like anything these days is controlled._

Charlie, finally back amongst the living, sighs deeply. “Someday,” she says mournfully to her coffee, “I will look back on this time and be extremely bitter that I didn’t get to be part of the magic spell research team.”

“Yeah, too bad you’re leading an army instead,” Dean says, tugging her ponytail. Charlie huffs at him and twitches it out of his grip.

The sound of shouting upstairs interrupts their moment of mid-Apocalypse domesticity. Dean and Mary trade resigned looks and play a quick round of rock-paper-scissors to decide who has to go deal with it.

“Hah!” Dean says triumphantly when he wins. “Okay, you deal with the research meltdown. I’m going to go make sure we still have an East Coast.” He grins when he says it, but it’s the overly bright smile of someone who isn’t actually joking. Victor and Garth are doing stellar work in Boston, especially given their total lack of actual authority, but an errant cargo ship managed to spread the virus to Bangor two days ago. Ellen and Jo are there now with Jo’s coterie of angels, trying to keep it from spreading to other ports.

Mary arms herself with a pot of coffee and a handful of mugs and starts upstairs. The shouting continues as she makes her way to the library, alternating between English (Cas) and Enochian (probably Aaoxaif, given the volume). Aaoxaif is by far the crankier of the two research angels, and has a default expression that is mostly made up of glaring. Gagiel, on the other hand, tends towards reasoned arguments and pleas for compromise. When Mary enters the library, Gagiel is nearly invisible behind a trembling volume of The Encyclopedia of Dead Languages, which is quite a feat for someone his size. Sam is sitting at the end of the library table wearing a pair of luridly purple headphones that have to be Charlie’s, and is apparently oblivious the theological battle going on in front of him.

Hannah, unexpectedly, is standing between Cas and Aaoxaif, anxiously wringing her hands. It’s rare for her to leave her communications post unless something has happened, and Mary frowns and puts her supplies down. The movement gets Sam’s attention and he startles, jarred out of his scholarly - or maybe just exhausted - haze. He pulls off his headphones, blinking at Hannah in surprise.

“Did something happen?” he asks Mary in an undertone. “I figured they were just arguing ethics again.”

“I’m not sure, I just got here,” Mary says, and raises her voice. “Hannah, sweetheart, what happened?”

Hannah gives her a spooked look, but it at least gets the attention of Cas and Aaoxaif. 

“The virus was discovered in Manhattan,” Cas says grimly. “The President has declared a state of emergency and placed the East Coast under martial law. The good news is that they don’t seem to realise that it’s more widespread than that and they haven’t connected the virus with the side effects of the other battles going on. The bad news is that it puts our teams in the area at far greater risk of being discovered and imprisoned.”

“Fuck,” Sam says under his breath.

Mary swallows hard, trying not to think about just how many people live in Manhattan. It had been a lot the last time she’d been alive, and she very much doubts that the number’s gone down in the meantime. “And the argument you’re having?”

Cas and Aaoxaif glare at each other.

“Castiel wishes to cast caution to the winds and test his half-baked theories immediately, regardless of the consequences,” Aaoxaif bites out.

“We have _no choice_ ,” Cas says, exasperated. “You are compassionless and far too pedantic. People are dying, Aaoxaif! The time for _caution_ is long past and the theories are sound.”

“The theories are fiction!” Aaoxaif shouts, incredulous. “There is no precedent, no basis for your plans! You have thrown things together in a manner that is slapdash at best and malicious at worst! I know you care nothing for tradition, you blasphemous -”

She says something in Enochian that makes Hannah gasp in shock and Gagiel drop his book completely.

_“Sister!”_

“You should not say such things!”

“ _Hey.”_ Sam’s hands slam down on the table hard enough to make the coffee mugs rattle. Mary jumps in surprise. “People are dying and we are dangerously close to losing,” he says, glaring at Aaoxaif. “Cas, what is it you want to test?”

“Everything that is ready,” Cas says immediately. 

“ _Nothing_ is ready,” Aaoxaif mutters, giving Sam a resentful look.

“The banishing, the containment field, and the cleansing spell,” Cas elaborates, ignoring Aaoxaif and focusing on Sam.

Sam grimaces. “Okay, and what can go wrong, besides the obvious?”

Mary frowns. It certainly isn’t obvious to _her_.

Cas hesitates. “The cleansing spell is the most… volatile,” he says after a pause. “The other two - the most that should go wrong is that they do not work and we are left with a whole demon and an uncontained area of infection.”

Well, that answers it a little bit, at least, although Aaoxaif doesn’t look like she agrees with Cas’s assessment in the slightest.

Sam rubs his forehead. “Okay. I think we do need to test it, but let’s bring it to Dean first. If he gives the go-ahead we try, got it?”

For a moment Mary is surprised by Sam’s deferral, but then she sees the angels nod and look relieved. Cas visibly restrains from rolling his eyes at their immediate capitulation, but it’s not like his siblings have had much practice at operating outside of a clear hierarchy.

Gagiel raises his hand slowly.

“Yes, Gagiel,” Sam says in a resigned voice that tells Mary volumes about how often someone has had to call on Gagiel before he’ll say anything.

“Must we all go? I mean to say, would it not be wise to have some of us remain here so we can continue to work?”

“A very good idea,” Cas says, looking pointedly at Aaoxaif. Aaoxaif sneers at him.

“Oh, I’m coming. Someone with sense should be there to supervise.”

Sam gives Mary a pleading look. “You want to come too, Mom?”

Mary weighs the pros (getting to leave the bunker and actually do something, going on a road trip with Cas and Sam) and the cons (going on a highly _dangerous_ road trip, having to spend time in a car with a belligerent Aaoxaif) and then sighs and capitulates. “I’d love to.”

The relief on Sam’s face will probably be very comical when she has time to think back on it later. For now, it’s overshadowed by the task ahead and the dangerous realities surrounding them.

“Great,” Sam says, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. “Now we just have to sell Dean on it.”

“I think he’ll see the… logic…” Mary says, trailing off. The logic of testing and implementing possibly war-changing strategies? Absolutely. The logic of letting his brother, his best friend, and his mother wander away from the safety of the bunker into war-torn and virus-infested backwoods? Not so much.

Sam’s mouth thins. He’s clearly followed her train of thought along pretty well, and he doesn’t seem to like it much, although Mary’s not sure if that’s because he’s anticipating an argument or if Dean’s overprotectiveness is making him claustrophobic and resentful. To be honest, she can sympathise more with Dean than with Sam on this one, but she knows that’s the parent in her. The part of her that remembers chafing under her own parents’ rules is entirely on Sam’s side.

“Maybe you’d better present it to him,” Sam says.

Mary shakes her head. It might make the argument easier, but the whole setup is too blatantly symptomatic of her boys’ problems with each other for her to justify her interference. End of the world or not, this is something they’re going to have to hash out eventually. 

“You’ll do fine, sweetheart,” she says. “You understand the details better than I do, anyway. And he might surprise you.”

Sam looks extremely doubtful, but he gives in. “All right, but we should maybe work on a Plan B in the meantime.”

They find Dean in the atrium, hunched over the map table with the daytime and nighttime communications teams and Pastor Jim. There are about six conversations going on at once and Dean looks to be actively involved in at least three of them simultaneously, but he stops and gives them his attention when they walk in.

“So, I guess you’ve heard the news,” Sam says dryly, eyeing the barely managed chaos.

“Caleb told me,” Dean says, with a pointed look at Hannah. Hannah shifts uncomfortably. It probably hadn’t even occurred to her to go to one of the humans with the information instead of finding Cas. “What do you need, guys?”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Actually, we think we’ve come up with a few things that could be of help. It took some doing, but we think we’ve got a way to set up a containment field around infected areas and maybe even cleanse the infected people inside. Cas also thinks he may have come up with a way that ordinary humans can kill demons angel-style.”

“What, like, palm to the forehead, melty eyeballs?” Dean says, looking impressed. “Okay, that all sounds good. What’s the catch?”

“Well,” Sam says, his voice impressively casual, “at the moment the containment field and the cleansing spell need to be powered by Grace. We might be able to figure out a way around that, given more time, but we don’t have it yet. And it would be best if we could test all this in the field before giving out the instruction manual.”

“‘Test it’,” Dean repeats, expressions hardening. “As in, go out there and give it a shot, see what happens?”

“There should be very little chance of side effects in the case of failure,” Cas says in a way he clearly thinks is reassuring.

“There’s some debate about _that,”_ Aaoxaif mutters.

Dean’s eyebrows climb. “And who is ‘we’?”

“Me, Cas, Aaoxaif, and Mom,” Sam says evenly. Across the map table, Charlie’s head snaps up from where she’s hunched over an array of tablets. She gives Mary a wide-eyed look that clearly says _you’re expecting him to agree to what now?_

Dean stares at them for a moment, completely expressionless. Sam holds his gaze calmly, and after a moment Dean looks away and rubs his eyes with one hand. “You sure about this, Sam?”

“Um. Yes,” Sam says, startled.

Dean nods, still not looking at them. “Okay, then.”

“Really?” Sam blurts.

“Yeah. Go.”

Sam darts a desperate look Mary’s way. She can understand his dilemma - on the one hand, this is exactly what they want. On the other, it looks like it’s causing Dean physical pain to agree to it, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

“Are you sure?” Sam says finally, wincing. “You seem, uh, not sure.”

Dean makes eye contact, finally. “Look, this is your thing, Sam, not mine. This, this research stuff, I’m not... If you say this is what has to happen, then I trust your judgment. Hell if it isn’t something we could use right now, anyway.” He has a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table, but his voice is steady. 

“Oh,” Sam says blankly. “Thanks. Yeah.”

“Sam.” Dean’s eyes flicker over to Mary and Cas. “I _trust you.”_

Sam follows his gaze and swallows audibly. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know.” Dean coughs and shifts, clearly embarrassed. “Okay, go do stuff. Get cracking. I’m busy.”

Implication that she and Cas can’t look after themselves aside, Mary feels like cheering. From the look on Charlie’s face, she’s wavering between that and exhausted tears. She finally settles on a smile as she bends back over her work.

Sam and the others file out to go gather their supplies. Mary lingers for a moment, watching Dean. He’s back to what he was doing before, but he’s clearly distracted.

Mary edges around the table until she’s next to him. “I’m proud of you, kiddo.”

Dean’s shoulders hunch defensively. Wrong tactic - he’s probably feeling a little too raw right now. Struck by sudden inspiration, she digs into her pocket instead. “Hey, could you hang on to something for me while I’m gone?”

That gets his attention, although he still seems a little cautious. “Yeah, sure. What is it?”

She holds out a hand. “I’ve been carrying this for so long I forgot I even still had it. It was supposed to be for you, originally, but it’s turned into a good-luck token of a sort.”

She drops the little matchbox car into his hand. It’s badly battered from so much time in her pocket being bumped around with spare change and extra bullets - the blue paint is scratched and nicked, and the little plastic back window popped out at some point and got lost.

Dean stares down at it. “The first time you called, you said you’d bring me matchbox cars,” he says slowly.

“The rest of them got lost,” Mary says apologetically. As far as she knows, they’re still in the car she and Cas had had to abandon after being kidnapped by Malachi.

His hand closes around it. Mary knows from experience that the little car fits nicely pressed into a palm. “You probably need more luck than I do, since you’re leaving.”

Mary shrugs. “I’ve got one of Sam’s army men in my other pocket.” It’s holding up a little better than the car did, since there’s no paint to scratch, but the little plastic rifle is permanently bent sideways, giving it a quizzical look. It’s a comforting lump in her left-hand pocket, even more so because her right-hand pocket now feels somehow emptier than empty. She’s a little surprised by how much she’d gotten accustomed to the car’s presence. “I’m going to need that back, though. This is just a loan.”

Dean nods. “Okay.” He glances over at her. “I’ll have it for you when you get back.”

Mary smiles. “Good.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It only takes them about half an hour to get all their stuff together, and they set out before midday. Sam spends a few minutes consulting with Charlie before they leave and comes up with a route and a destination that should avoid the worst of the supernatural upsets and be mostly deserted to boot. They all keep a weather eye as they drive, Sam in the passenger seat and Cas and Aaoxaif in the back with a scrupulously observed no-man’s-land between them, but the most they come across are a few roped-off backroads and one lonely checkpoint manned by two bored National Guardsmen who wave them through without doing more than a cursory eyeballing of the car’s occupants.

When they pass the first barricaded road, Sam twists in his seat to try and look down it. When he doesn’t say anything, Mary lets it go, but when he does it again for the second she has to ask.

“Charlie said we’re skirting the edge of an angel-demon grudge match,” Sam explains sheepishly. “You mentioned the weird after-effects you saw in Cantril and I was kind of curious. You can’t see anything from this far away, though.”

“We could stop and take a look, if you want,” Mary offers. They’re on a timetable, but they should have time for that much. And it’s good for Sam to be well-informed, considering he’s on the research team.

And, okay, really she just loves his curiosity.

“We have a more important mission ahead of us,” Aaoxaif says pointedly.

“We should stop and look,” Cas says immediately. “It will be educational.”

Sam hides a smile as Mary pulls over. Aaoxaif huffs impatiently in the backseat. “ _I_ will remain here.”

“Yes, stay and guard the car,” Cas says, just enough dryness in his voice to let Mary know that he absolutely understands the cultural connotations of the phrase. Sam has a suspicious coughing fit.

They climb over the barriers and head down the road. It would actually be quite a pretty walk if it weren’t for the circumstances and the necessary level of vigilance - it’s a sunny day and there are just enough trees that the dirt road is sun-dappled and picturesque.

Then they hit the edge of the battle site, and the picturesqueness takes a pretty severe hit - and not only because of the growing reek of sulphur.

“What.” Sam says, goggling at a tree that looks… well, the only word Mary can think of is ‘inverted’, in every way that word could possibly be applied. Beyond it is a stand of bushes that are weirdly shiny, and when Cas brushes against them they disintegrate into metallic dust that thuds as it hits the ground as if it’s a lot more dense than it has any right to be. The road beneath them becomes warped and dizzying as they walk, not only because the dirt and the rocks no longer appear to be made out of dirt and rocks, but because it sort of slides around in Mary’s vision every time she tries to look at it. It makes her nauseous.

They step around a bird that hangs frozen and unsupported in mid-flight in the middle of the path, and walk into a clearing.

It’s not a natural clearing. It’s the kind of completely circular clearing that appears when something big explodes. At the edges are tree trunks laid flat and pointing towards the periphery. Some of them seem to have been transmuted into something else entirely, and at least one looks like it’s made out of nothingness. Negative space, maybe. Sulphur and ash hang heavy in the air, although the ground is too destroyed to see if there are any dead angel wing marks.

“Is it safe for us to be this close?” Sam asks in a hushed voice. It echoes across the glassed-over crater in from of them, which is easily big enough to have held a town the size of Cantril and, given the nature of some of the debris around the blast radius, possibly once did. As the vibrations of Sam’s voice carry across the open space, something in the middle of the crater seems to writhe and distort the air around it. Mary shivers.

Cas shrugs. “I wouldn’t touch anything.” He leans over the edge of the pit to examine an ever-flowing stream of something that looks like green mercury. It’s running uphill.

“This is…” Sam swallows. “Is it like this because the angels were cast out?”

“Yes,” Cas says calmly. “At full power a battle of this scale would have consumed most of the state.”

Sam gapes at him. “But… Cas, that can’t be right. There were angelic battles on Earth during the civil war and they never left this kind of damage.”

Cas blinks at him. “All of those battles were minor engagements - skirmishes. I made sure of it. There hasn’t been anything more extensive than that on Earth since before the time of humanity.”

Sam’s face undergoes a complex series of emotions. Mary can pick out surprise and maybe guilt before he lands on a neutral sort of curiosity. “What happened in the other battles? The long-ago ones, I mean. I guess the effects go away after a while?”

“Not at all,” Cas says, looking surprised. “The land and creatures do adapt somewhat, given enough time, but the effects will linger indefinitely. How much do you know about the continent known as Australia?”

“What, seriously?” Mary says, startled. “Australia was an angelic battle?” Actually, it kind of explains a lot, like why half the animals are weird and everything else is poisonous. “Huh.”

“‘It would explain the platypus’,” Sam says, looking amused.

“Actually, the platypus mostly survived as originally planned,” Cas says seriously. “Koalas, on the other hand…” he shudders. “And the less said about the gympie-gympie the better.”

“So, no touching,” Sam says, eyeing their surroundings queasily. “What I don’t get is how this hasn’t led to a massive panic. Obviously someone noticed it or the roads wouldn’t have been blocked off, but I would have expected there to at least be… I dunno, scientists or something.”

Personally, Mary thinks that a scientist confronted with this would probably just cry, but she does actually know the answer. “Two reasons,” she says. “first, Charlie’s been keeping it as local as possible so there’s less chance of people from different jurisdictions sharing information, and second, this is the kind of thing that people just don’t want to know about. I mean, look around - even though I know where it came from it’s unsettling as anything. If I just stumbled across this with no context? I’d think I was crazy, or it was a hoax. As far as I know even the conspiracy theorists haven’t taken hold of this.” Willful blindness to the supernatural is something that every hunter observes eventually, and the savviest have learned to take advantage of.

“Give it time,” Sam says dryly. “Maybe we’d better get back to the car.”

The walk back is pretty quiet, even after they’ve passed the edge of the weirdness and gotten back to the unusually reassuring car on the side of the road. Aaoxaif is sitting in the back with her arms crossed, but when she sees their faces she unbends a little.

“You’ve never seen an angelic battle before.”

“This one had demons as well, technically,” Cas says. Even he sounds a little subdued. “But no, they hadn’t. Not a real one.”

Mary pulls back onto the road and keeps driving. They pass a third blocked off road, but nobody tries to look down it.

“We will prevail,” Aaoxaif says suddenly. “We will protect this world.”

Mary can’t think of the right words to say, so she smiles at Aaoxaif in the rear-view mirror instead. After a moment Aaoxaif smiles back, like she’s not entirely sure she’s doing it right.

“So, here’s another question,” Sam says slowly, as if it’s something he doesn’t really want to ask. “Let’s say we’re able to pull this off tomorrow, get ahead of the virus. What then? We’ll free up a lot of our people to deal with the angel-demon stuff, but what can we actually do? That kind of thing, back there - what would even happen to humans who tried to get in the middle of a throwdown like that?”

Mary remembers the bits and pieces of what she’s pretty sure had once been human habitation littered around the edges of the crater, and grimaces. She’s pretty sure she can guess.

In the backseat, Cas and Aaoxaif exchange a long look. Mary doesn’t know what they manage to communicate with it, but eventually Aaoxaif says “Humans have done many things I wouldn’t have expected them to be able to do.”

Coming from Aaoxaif it means more than it might have otherwise, but it’s still hardly a ringing endorsement. Everyone falls silent, and after a moment Sam winces and turns on the radio.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Their destination is McClave, Colorado, which has the dubious distinction of being infected with the Croatoan virus and also being located near a conveniently empty state park where they can cause a moderate amount of destruction without attracting any attention. It’s also rural and comically small, which should make for a good first test. They stop just shy of the town to spend the night, and head in the next morning.

“Everybody have a good night’s sleep?” Sam asks as they congregate, yawning, around the car the next morning. He sounds a little annoyed - he’d lost the surreptitious rock-paper-scissors game they’d had last night to see who got to room with Cas and, since neither of them were keen to be watched over by a vigilantly glaring angel the whole night, who had to share with Aaoxaif. They’d both agreed that having Cas and Aaoxaif room together would be a recipe for disaster.

“Surprisingly, yes,” Mary says, stretching. She’d forgotten how good an uninterrupted night’s sleep could feel. She doesn’t know if it’s because they left the bunker or because Muriel’s giving her a night off from the nightmares in order to hit her harder the next night, and she can’t entirely bring herself to care. “Who are we meeting in McClave?”

“Isaac and Tamara,” Sam says absently, stowing gear in the trunk. Mary vaguely remembers them from the warehouse and the resurrection spell - she thinks they’d been a married couple, and pretty competent hunters, but she’d never really gotten a chance to talk to them. “There’s an angel too, I think - T’Pau?”

“Tpau,” Aaoxaif corrects.

“Right,” Sam says, looking embarrassed. “And here I thought that Charlie and Dean couldn’t possibly have that right...”

“Wait,” Mary says, cottoning on. “Like the character in-”

“No apostrophe,” Sam says hastily. “Anyway! Let’s get going. Tamara said she’d meet us at the State Park.”

Tamara is indeed waiting for them, leaning up against the side of a battered pickup truck in the deserted campground. In the back of the truck is a trussed-up ravening Croat with its mouth duct-taped shut. It’s a woman, or was once.

“You said you needed one to test your spell, right?” Tamara says, grinning at their expressions. “Figured it might come in handy.”

“This is excellent,” Cas says. “It will streamline the initial testing stage significantly.”

“Yes,” Aaoxiaf says, her voice bright with sarcasm. “Now instead of causing destruction to shrubbery we can explode an entire person.”

“Uh,” Tamara says, unnerved, “is that a possibility?”

“A remote one,” Cas says reassuringly, already setting up supplies.

“It is almost a certainty,” Aaoxaif says at the same time, and they glare at each other.

“They’re always like that,” Mary says apologetically. “I do trust Cas’s judgment, though. Sam, do you need to help them?”

Sam shakes his head. “For the size we’re doing here two is more than enough. I’d just get in the way.” 

That leaves them with nothing to do but sit by and watch Cas and Aaoxaif bicker as they get everything ready. Mary goes and sits down on the hood of her car, and after a moment Sam and Tamara join her. She checks her phone - one new text from Dean, making sure they’ve made it to Tamara safely, and one from Charlie warning them about suspicious activity in Colby and advising them to take an alternate route back. Since she knows how nervous Dean had been about letting them go, Mary’s been texting him a lot more frequently than usual, and she has a sneaking suspicion that Cas and Sam may have been doing the same as well. He hasn’t started complaining about it yet, at least not to her.

“Hey, Sam,” Mary says, when Cas and Aaoxaif’s latest argument devolves into Enochian and becomes impossible to follow, “what do you know about Metatron?”

Sam turns to look at her, frowning. “Why do you ask? He hasn’t been popping up too, has he?”

“Oh, no,” Mary reassures him. “No, he’s just the one I don’t understand in all this. What do you think he’s _doing_ up there?”

Sam shrugs. “I guess he’s just enjoying the victory. From his perspective, he’s the hero and now he gets to enjoy his happy ending. If anything, I’d guess he’s watching the angels get into trouble and laughing himself sick.”

“Which one’s Metatron, again?” Tamara asks, craning her neck to get a better look at the symbols Cas is spraypainting on the dirt.

“He kicked the angels out of Heaven,” Mary says.

“Dick move,” Tamara comments.

“You’re not wrong,” Sam says. “I mean, he didn’t have a great time of it, but it’s safe to say he’s now exceeded my sympathy.” When they look at him curiously, he elaborates. “He was the Scribe of God - took dictation for the tablets, which is how he was able to empty Heaven even without having one on hand. After God left, Metatron was afraid the archangels would try to get all that information from him, so he left Heaven and went into hiding on Earth. He spent forever here, mostly just reading books from what we could tell. He’s kind of a story junkie.”

“Hence the hero idea,” Mary says, nodding. “You think he’s internalized it all.”

“I think he also spent all that time coming up with a way to punish the angels and get back to Heaven and it worked out exactly the way he wanted,” Sam says, not without bitterness.

“So I guess the real question is, what does the hero do after the story?” Tamara muses. Mary gives her a surprised look, and she shrugs. “Well, that’s the problem, right? Whatever else he might have access to, he’s the only powered-up angel left. If he decides to start up a sequel he could cause a lot of mischief.”

Sam groans. “Well, if for the sequel he decides to take out Hell, I can’t say I’d complain. I don’t really know what else is left for him to do if he does get bored with retirement. Heaven’s his, the angels are pretty much screwed, and he’ll get to enjoy it all on reruns for as long as he wants.” He puts a hand over his face. “Besides, he should know that sequels are never as good, right?”

“One apocalypse at a time,” Tamara says, patting Sam on the arm. 

“That’s the hunter version of ‘don’t borrow trouble’,” Mary translates, making Sam laugh.

“We’re about set,” Cas calls from by the truck. “We just need to get the infected one into place and we can test our theories.”

What the angels have set up is a series of concentric sigil lines, some drawn on the dirt and some written on small yard signs, with a clear space in the middle. Cas explains that the innermost rings are the containment spell and the outer ones are for the cleansing.

“If everyone will please find a weapon, we will activate the containment spell and then set the creature free,” he says, as blandly as an usher asking everyone to take their seats.

“Are we sure this is a good plan?” Tamara says nervously.

“No,” Aaoxaif says, handing her a shotgun.

It does seem a little ill-advised to Mary, too, but she can also see the logic of it. How are they going to test for containment if the Croat can’t move to try to break out? And Cas had said the cleansing spell was the trickier of the two, so they shouldn’t have to take cover and lose sight of the Croat until after the containment spell has worked. “Aaoxaif is the one who’s going to trigger it, right?”

Cas’s sigh is nearly inaudible, but Mary had been looking for it. “She will activate both spells. I will stand here with a gun and provide cover.”

“I will begin,” Aaoxaif says. “It’s a pity that prayers to Maturinus no longer have any power.”

“Patron saint of the mentally ill,” Cas explains, looking put-upon.

Aaoxaif picks her way carefully through the sigils until she comes to the smallest ring of sigils. She pulls a bundle of materials out of her jacket and kneels for a moment, whispering over them, then lights them on fire and tosses them down. There’s a quick pulse of light, and she immediately steps over the line to the struggling creature, cutting it free with one swift slash and jumping back out of the way.

The creature lurches to its feet, ripping the duct tape off its mouth, and lunges. There’s no flashy glow or sparks or anything, but it halts abruptly, looking confused. Beside her, Cas makes a quietly satisfied noise. Aaoxaif’s expression doesn’t change.

“Now do we take cover?” Mary asks.

Sam shakes his head. “Not yet. We’re testing to see if the containment field works just as well when it’s put in place with yard signs as when it’s drawn in the dirt. It’ll be a lot easier if we can just post signs around large areas.”

Mary nods - that makes sense. She readies her grip on her gun as Aaoxaif approaches again and kneels down between two of the yard signs. She repeats the spell the same way she did before, and then scuffs a line through the previous spell’s markings. There’s a slight sputter in the air as the first containment field dies, and the creature lunges again. The second field seems to have a little bit of give in it, but it still holds solid against the worst of the creature’s thrashing.

“Report,” Cas calls.

“Minor expenditure of Grace,” Aaoxaif says, not turning to look at them. “Particularly large areas may require more than one angel, but for the most part I would imagine that one would suffice.” If she’s excited about their success or irritated at being proven wrong, she doesn’t let it show.

“This will be a huge help,” Tamara says, beaming. “You guys haven’t been on duty around an infected town, so you don’t know, but oh my God, this is _huge_. Am I right in thinking that ordinary humans can pass through? It’s just the infected that get stopped?”

“That’s correct,” Cas says, pleased. “It’s a variation on an Egyptian oracular amuletic decree, which confers health and protection on the wearer -”

“ _Now_ we take cover,” Sam says, beating a retreat towards the truck. Mary collars Cas and follows him.

There’s a pause while Aaoxaif readies herself, and then she says, “Activating spell… now.”

There’s a brief silence.

“Nothing,” Aaoxaif reports.

Cas wriggles out of Mary’s hold and darts around the corner of the truck. “We’ll try the second variation.”

Once they’ve altered the sigils and spell ingredients accordingly, the second variation produces a minor explosion which leaves a perfectly circular trench around the containment spell and sends Aaoxaif stumbling back several steps. It does not cure the Croat.

“Third variation,” Cas says, looking worried, as dirt patters down on them.

This attempt produces a blinding flash of white light, followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground. Mary exchanges an alarmed look with Sam and they pile out from behind their barrier.

Aaoxaif is still on her feet, although she’s swaying slightly. The Croat is flat on the ground, writhing, and even as they watch the marks of the virus are starting to fade from her skin.

“Oh my God!” Tamara says, grabbing Mary’s arm. “It worked? Did it work? You’re all geniuses!”

“It looks like it has,” Cas confirms, as close to the center as he can get without disturbing any spellwork. “I can see the flesh repairing itself.”

“That one takes a good deal more effort,” Aaoxaif says, allowing Sam to help hold her up. “I would estimate that an area the size of McClave would require three angels, at _least_ , which will make this extremely difficult to reproduce on a larger scale. If it’s even possible to replicate both of these madnesses on a larger scale without it overloading and destroying everything, of course.”

“It’s still more than we had,” Mary says, too buoyant to be bothered by Aaoxaif’s dour practicality. Even if it means cleansing the affected in smaller groups she’s glad they at least have a workable cure.

The woman in the center of the circle groans and rolls onto her side. “My _head_... where am I?” She sits up, looking around. “Who are you? Ugh, gross, what’s all over my _clothes_...”

“It’s difficult to explain and you probably wouldn’t understand it,” Aaoxaif says before anyone can get a word in first. “Please stand and attempt to walk towards us.”

“Uh,” the woman says, eyeballing them. “No offense, but I don’t think I want to.” 

Mary guiltily shifts her gun out of sight. “It’s all right, honey, we’re not here to hurt you. My name’s Mary. Can you tell me yours?” It had been such a long shot they’d never really discussed the whole aftermath part of the operation, which is an oversight. Still, it’s not like hunters don’t have experience dealing with confused and frightened people who have just survived something horrific.

“You may attempt to flee in the opposite direction if that suits you better,” Aaoxaif offers.

The woman gives her a consternated look and then splits the difference by edging sideways towards the relative cover of Mary’s car. She passes over the containment field without a problem, and everyone in the group relaxes infinitesimally.

“So,” she says, shifting uncomfortably but looking more secure now that she’s close to a possible exit. “This is going to sound weird, but is it possible I tried to, um… _eat_ one of you?”

“Ah, you do remem- “ Aaoxaif begins. 

Sam claps a hand over her mouth. “There’s been a virus going around. You’ve probably got some weird memories to go along with it.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman says skeptically.

“I’ll tell you what,” Mary says. “I have some water and clean clothes in the car. Would you like that?” Mary’s clothes are going to swim on her, but that’s better than them being too small.

The woman wavers for a minute. “Is there maybe an option for some kind of alcohol later?”

“We might be able do that,” Mary says seriously.

“Yeah, okay then. I’m Laura.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

There’s a curfew on in the area, so they spend the night at the campground using a couple of tents (and a half-bottle of whiskey) that Tamara had had in the cab of her truck, with Aaoxaif, Tamara, and Laura in one and Cas, Sam, and Mary in the other. By the grace of whatever’s still around to provide miracles Muriel decides to give Mary another night off, and she wakes up the next morning feeling refreshed and optimistic, if a little apprehensive at what Muriel might be planning to do once she’s lulled Mary into a sense of complacency.

Laura, for her part, seems to have accepted her current situation with a mental shrug and pretty much goes with whatever they choose to tell her. They set off for McClave as soon as the curfew is lifted the next morning.

Tamara guides them to a house on the outskirts of the town that she and Isaac have taken over. The owners are missing, probably because they’ve been killed or infected in the town itself, although Charlie has noticed a few reports about people fleeing from populated areas as word about the virus spreads. It’s possible they just bailed.

Isaac comes out to meet them and gives Tamara an enthusiastic enough greeting that even Cas looks politely away (Aaoxaif, on the other hand, watches with a clinical expression that suggests she’s taking notes for her eventual dissertation on the bizarre social behaviors of humans).

“Glad you guys could make it!” Isaac says, once he and Tamara have been thoroughly reintroduced. “Tamara told me what happened. Good work - we can definitely use it.”

“Is there a military presence here?” Cas asks, squinting at their surroundings. It’s deceptively small-town bucolic by the house, right up until the chain-link fence with a giant ‘CONTAMINATED’ sign on it circling the town proper. Past that it’s… well. Anyone owning a hardware store nearby will be able to do pretty brisk business, assuming they manage to get the cure working on a larger scale.

The breeze shifts, and Mary gags a little. There’s also the _smell_.

Tamara shrugs. “Not so much, anymore - it was being handled by the state police, initially, but it didn’t take much to convince them that we should take over. Just a couple of fake CDC badges, really, and they left pretty fast.”

“Didn’t even ask for paperwork,” Isaac says cheerfully. “Frankly, I think they were a little unnerved.”

“I do _not_ blame them,” Laura mutters. 

“Anyway, Tamara said you had something you wanted to test on demons, too?” Isaac says, as if they’re discussing a local sports team.

“Yeah,” Sam says, looking interested. Mary knows that he’d been working pretty closely with Cas on this one, at least partly because Aaoxaif had been completely uninterested in it. “You know where we can find one?”

Isaac’s cheer dims a little for the first time. “Well, sort of. We put in a call to Dean and he talked to Crowley. One of Crowley’s people is going to bring us a demon sometime today. Hopefully in chains,” he adds in an undertone.

Well, that explains the lack of enthusiasm. Old habits die hard, and asking hunters to trust demons is a pretty big request.

“Anyway,” Isaac says, brightening, “that gives us a little bit of time. Do you want to set up for the spells? Or take a swing round with me? Tpau and her friend Omia are patrolling right now.”

“Good, that gives us three for the cleansing spell,” Aaoxaif says, eyes narrowing. “We should start as soon as possible.”

Isaac pointedly waits for confirmation from Sam. “No reason we can’t do both at once,” Sam says, once he realises why Isaac’s staring at him.

“I’ll stay back here,” Mary says. “I want to check in with a couple of people.” It will also keep her well away from the infected on the other side of the fence, which is not nothing. She remembers Blue Earth a little too clearly to make her current proximity at all comfortable.

Laura decides to stay behind with Mary as well, but everyone else goes with Isaac for the disturbing grand tour. Mary retreats to the porch swing, where she can keep an eye on the driveway and Laura in the kitchen at the same time, and calls Dean.

He picks up pretty quickly, which tells her that he’s either managed to find a moment of downtime or he’s particularly worried about them. “Mom? How’s it going?”

“Pretty good so far, sweetie,” Mary says. It makes her smile to hear his voice. “We did the first tests on the containment and cleansing spells and they worked out pretty well. We’re going to try them on a larger scale this afternoon and Isaac said we should have a demon to practice the exorcism on soon. An enemy demon, I mean.”

Dean blows out a relieved breath. “Good, that’s really good to hear, Mom.”

“So how’s everything going on your end?” Mary asks dryly.

“Eh, could be worse,” Dean says tiredly. “The East Coast is holding, for the moment at least, although we’re down to about half of Boston. Charlie’s seeing warning signs all over the Midwest but there’s nothing concrete yet. Oh, and one of Malachi’s guys started a cult in Utah to get himself some human footsoldiers, so hooray for that. Caleb and Pastor Jim left to deal with it.”

“Doesn’t that make you kind of shorthanded at the bunker?” Mary asks, frowning.

“Well, we’re not sleeping anyway, so,” Dean jokes, and sighs. “We’re fine, Mom. It’s not like we’re up fighting all the time, we’re just coordinating things.”

“That’s plenty tiring and _very_ important,” Mary says tartly. “I know it’s frustrating to be off the front lines, honey, but can you imagine this whole thing without you and Charlie and Linda to keep it together? News about all this would already be everywhere, there would be total panic, and all of the hunters would be on their own because they need someone they trust to keep them together. It would be a disaster.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, but she can hear the smile in his voice. “I guess I am kind of awesome.”

“You’re my son, of course you are,” Mary says. “Do you need us to do anything while we’re out here? Can we help out at all, give you a break?”

“Nah, we’re good,” Dean says. “Oh, Charlie wants chocolate. She’s got crazy eyes right now so I’d do what she says. Other than that, I think we’re good. Take care of yourselves, you hear?”

“We will,” Mary assures him. “Try to get some sleep, okay? Both of you.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Dean says, which Mary doubts. “Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.” 

Mary calls her mother next. Deanna and Dorothy both have cell phones, and at least a basic understanding of how to use them, so it only takes a few rings before Deanna figures out how to answer hers. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mom, it’s me,” Mary says, smiling. She’d programmed her number into Deanna’s phone, so her name should have popped up when it rang, but old hunter habits die hard. It’s easy to turn a basic ‘hi’ into nearly any cover story or accent depending on who turns out to be on the other end.

“Well, hello, Mary!” Deanna says happily. “It’s good to hear from you, honey. Are you still at the bunker?”

“No, we’re out chasing down some theories. We’re safe, though. How are you and Dorothy finding the modern world?”

“It’s a little bit Asimov, a little bit Orwell,” Deanna says. “And disappointingly low on Buck Rogers.”

Mary laughs. “I thought pretty much the same thing.”

“Can’t believe no one’s built a rocket car yet,” Deanna sighs, and then coughs.

Mary frowns. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, pumpkin,” Deanna says, sounding disgusted. “My first hunting trip in - well, technically about forty-five years - and I came down with a head cold. Did you know that they still make Vick’s VapoRub?”

“I did, actually - it surprised me too,” Mary says, vividly recalling her own first experience with modern-day pharmacies back when Cas was sick and a total stranger. “You’re taking it easy, right? Do I need to speak to Dorothy?”

“I promise I’ll take care of myself,” Deanna sighs. “I could pass you over to Dorothy if you want, but Charlie put some angry birds on her phone and she’s currently engrossed with them. Do you have those? It’s like an arcade game. Makes me go crosseyed.”

“I might, but I haven’t looked for them,” Mary says, a little intrigued. “Don’t let her give herself eye strain, okay?”

“I won’t. Be careful out there, kiddo.”

“You too,” Mary says. “Get some rest.”

Mary dithers for a moment after hanging up on her mom. There are a few other people she’s kind of wondering about and would like to check in with - Missouri and Jody, mostly - but it’s also getting to the point that she’s a little nervous about how long the others have been gone. McClave is tiny, sure, but it’s still an entire _town_ they have to walk around, so it’s reasonable for them to still be walking. There’s no reason for her to be thinking of Muriel’s nightmares, where the infected storm the bunker and tear -

No. Those have all been illusions, specifically tailored to break her. Sam and Cas are in a group, and heavily armed, and all of them know to be wary, so there’s really nothing to be worried about.

She and Dean and Garth had been armed and wary too, though, and if it weren’t for Cain they’d be dead or worse right now. She wonders if Cain is nearby right now. If something bad happened, would she be able to trick him into helping her again?

Maybe she should just go see if they’re within sight yet.

Her dilemma is solved for her by the arrival of Crowley’s demon minion and her captive, and the next few minutes is occupied with making a devil’s trap in the driveway to hold their guest until Cas and Sam can try their exorcism (which they will do, when they get back, which will be in the next few minutes).

Crowley’s minion takes off as fast as demonly possible, glancing around suspiciously the entire time and only scowling when Mary tries to get any information out of her. Mary sits herself down on the porch steps, shotgun across her knees, and only belatedly notices Laura standing openmouthed in the doorway.

“Uh,” Mary says, eyeing the gagged and trussed-up demon glaring resentfully at them from the middle of a cluster of complex and (unfortunately) neon pink eldritch symbols. “So…”

“Never mind,” Laura says, retreating back into the house. “I think I’m happier not knowing.”

The others come back not long after and Mary blows out a sigh of relief, trying not to notice how her hands had started shaking. 

Tpau turns out to be a surprisingly cheerful and enthusiastic angel who had taken an interest in human popular culture as soon as she’d found out why her name tended to make humans laugh. When they appear at the foot of the driveway, she’s earnestly trying to convince Cas and Aaoxaif to say ‘live long and prosper’. Sam looks like he’s about to have a coronary from trying not to laugh.

Omia, the other angel, is mostly silent, although she does look mildly amused at Tpau’s antics. Mary suspects that she may be a recent convert to the Free Will Army.

“How should we do this?” Isaac asks, eyeing the captive demon. “One after the other, or split up?”

“Split up,” Cas and Aaoxaif say together, and look mortified.

“Sounds good, thanks guys,” Sam says, mouth twitching. “Me and Cas can handle this, if the rest of you want to deal with the town.”

“I’ll stay here, too,” Mary says quickly. “I can watch your backs.” She’d prefer to have Sam and Cas within sight for the moment. Just the smell that carries through the yard from time to time is enough to make her nauseous and a little panicky.

Cas gives her a pleased smile and sets to putting his supplies in order while the others head back down the driveway. Unlike the bigger spells, this one seems to only require a series of symbols drawn on the palm of his hand. He waits patiently while Sam draws it for him, working off a set of papers Mary recognizes from a half dozen motel rooms during their time traveling together. 

“Is this your alchemy stuff?” she asks, trying to get a look at it while also keeping an eye on the captive demon.

“Yes,” Cas says. “It’s significantly expanded from then, but its basis is in the work I was doing on the road. Well spotted.”

Sam finishes drawing and makes a notation on his paper. “Okay, give it a shot.”

Cas marches over to the demon and presses his hand to her forehead. Nothing happens.

“Okay, second try,” Sam says. 

Cas sighs and lets Sam carefully alter the existing spellwork. “The first one was a bit of a gamble anyway.”

The second one doesn’t work, and neither does the third. After the fourth, Sam has to switch to Cas’s other hand because he’s run out of room. In the background Mary notices the containment spell around the town go live. Sam runs out of room on both of Cas’s hands, so they switch places and Sam tries for a while.

A blinding flash of light announces the activation of the cleansing spell. The demon, still unaffected in the center of the trap, has progressed from disdain to incredulity and now seems to be desperately bored.

Cas makes a final mark on Sam’s hand. “That’s the last one.”

By this point they both look like they tripped and fell into a tattoo parlor hands first, but Sam nods agreeably and gives it a shot. Nothing happens.

Cas’s shoulders slump. “I don’t have anything else.”

Sam starts getting ready to dispose of the demon in a more tested manner. “It’s okay, Cas. The containment and cleansing spells were the really important ones and they worked great.”

Mary settles the shotgun into the crook of her arm and goes to sit by Cas. He’s staring despondently down at his ink-stained hands. “You really wanted this one to work, huh?”

Cas nods miserably. “I know that the other spells were more important and I’m glad they were successful.”

“But this one was really important to you,” Mary finishes for him.

“I know it’s irrational.”

“Who cares about rationality?” Mary says, hugging him a little. “If you’re upset, it’s still important. And hey, you just rewrote like a billion years of angel scholarship. You just cured the _Croatoan virus_ , Cas, that’s huge! Every angel we’ve talked to said that couldn’t be done.”

Cas tries to smile. “You’re right, of course. I’m very pleased.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “What I mean is that if anyone can figure this out, it’ll be you. Even if it takes a couple of tries.”

“Oh.” Cas sits up a tiny bit straighter. “Thank you. I had a lot of help.”

Mary gives in and tousles his hair. He ducks away, laughing a little.

“Okay, all done,” Sam calls out from the devil’s trap, slipping his knife back into his jacket. “Want to go check out how things are going in the town? And then I don’t know about you guys but I think we deserve a night off.”

“Sounds good,” Mary says, getting up and pulling Cas up after her. “Do you maybe want to wash your hands first, though?”

Sam gives his be-sigilled hands a dismayed look. “You know, in retrospect we probably shouldn’t have used permanent marker.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They do indeed wind up taking a night off, although it ends up being more like half a night once everything’s said and done. The specs for the containment and cleansing spells have to be sent to Charlie for distribution, plus there are the confused and frequently rattled townspeople to take care of, and with the angels completely knocked flat from the spell they’re three short. Laura comes in handy there - her ability to shrug off weirdness proves to be particularly calming to her friends and neighbors, and by nightfall they’ve started putting the town to rights again. Mary’s sure that there is a quite a bit of healing ahead of them still, but most of them at least seem to be capable of moving forward.

The owners of the house Tamara and Isaac took over never do show up, so once they’re mostly sure that the town will carry on without them they retreat back to it for a subdued but no less heartfelt celebration. 

“To the end of the Croatoan virus,” Tamara says, raising a beer.

Aaoxaif frowns at this premature statement from where she’s slowly but surely tipping over sideways in an armchair, but by some miracle (probably exhaustion) she manages to refrain from saying anything. Tpau beams at them all and sleepily says a toast in a different language that Mary suspects may be fictional in origin, if the sheepish look on Isaac’s face is any indication.

The house is big enough for everyone to have separate bedrooms, worn-out angels included, and Mary stumbles up to hers around midnight tired, mildly drunk, and satisfied. If she’s learned anything in both of her lives, it’s that you should take your moments of victory where you find them and not think too hard about how fleeting they might turn out to be, so she falls asleep that night feeling contented and optimistic.

Maybe it’s because she’s had several nights of good sleep recently, and maybe it’s the alcohol, but when the nightmares start that night she actually manages to startle herself awake at the very beginning. After a moment of surprise, she also realises that it’s much later in the night than she would have expected. Apparently Muriel got a late start.

The next thing she realises is that someone’s on the bed with her.

Her first thought is to go for the knife under her pillow. Her second thought, when she very carefully rolls over enough to see that the someone is Cas, is confusion. On those occasions when Cas decides to watch over her for a night he always sits himself down across the room. This is the first time he’s been this close, and it’s the first time he’s ever fallen asleep doing it.

He’s sitting propped up against the headboard and as she twists further to get a better look his hand slips off her shoulder. She hadn’t even noticed it there.

A few pieces begin to slot nastily into place. This isn’t just the first nightmare she’s had in days, it’s the first time she’s had a room to herself since leaving the bunker. 

She stows the knife back under her pillow and shakes him awake. “Cas, you better have a good explanation for this.”

He startles, head snapping up, and it takes him a second to realise what’s happened. For an instant his face is swamped with guilt and then his expression blanks.

Mary sits up fully, putting a little distance between them so she can see his face easily in the half-light of the bedroom. “Tell me you haven’t been using your Grace to keep Muriel out of my dreams.”

He’s very subtle when he panics, she’ll give him that. “I can explain.”

“I would be very interested to hear your explanation,” Mary says evenly.

Cas swallows and looks away. “Earlier… I told you that my Grace was coming back differently.”

Mary’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t really expand on that.”

Cas shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. This time, as it comes back, it’s… easier to tell that it’s not mine. It’s… angry, I guess you could say, and it makes me feel…” he gestures helplessly.

“Sick?” Mary says quietly, her heart sinking. Rebekah had said that illness would be a sign of Cas’s deterioration.

“Uncomfortable.” Cas corrects, and shrugs unhappily. “I know you don’t want me to use it, and I think you, you may be right to an extent, but I feel better when I can… drain it off, a little. If it allows me to help you at the same time, well.”

Mary puts her head in her hands and breathes carefully. “Cas, what did I tell you about this stuff?”

“You told me to tell you about it,” Cas mumbles, staring at his lap. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d let me.” He glances at her. “ _You_ didn’t tell me Muriel was sending you nightmares.”

“I never promised to,” Mary points out, dropping her hands. “Cas, this is crazy. You’ve got to get rid of it. Do you not know how? Because I’m sure Rebekah -”

“I know,” Cas interrupts. “I mean, I know Rebekah could help. And I know it worries you, and I’m sorry for that. Rebekah spoke to me about it and told me what to watch for, and I promise that if it truly gets bad I will take steps. But not yet.”

“What can possibly be so important about it?” Mary asks, frustration leaking into her voice. “Rebekah said it could really hurt you, maybe even _kill_ you if it got out of hand. Is it being human? Did you hate being human that much?”

“No,” Cas says quietly. “I enjoyed being human.”

“Then what? I swear to God, Cas, if you say you’ll be useless without it -”

“No. I mean, yes, but…” Cas sighs. “I need it for the plan.”

It actually takes Mary a second to catch up. “The plan? Wait, the doomsday plan? The one I told you was useless if it required you getting hurt?”

To his credit, Cas winces. “Yes, that plan. And I’m not hurt. I’m… managing.”

For a moment Mary’s actually speechless with frustration. “Cas, you - it - you’re sneaking into my room in the middle of the night, trying to - to _balance_ your Grace so it’s not too painful and doesn’t make you sick! You -” she makes herself stop and take a deep breath. Cas is glaring mutinously at the bedclothes. “Okay. Cas, I’m going to tell you pretty much the same thing I told Dean when he was worried about not taking the mark of Cain.”

“That was different,” Cas protests.

“ _Do not interrupt me right now Castiel.”_ Only long practice born of fighting with John while the boys were asleep upstairs allows her to keep her voice down. “You can’t play ‘what if’s unless you look at all the sides. Maybe we’ll need a contingency plan and maybe we won’t, but we will definitely need _you_. I’d rather have you human and healthy than have to watch you waste away on the off-chance that your Grace will come in handy!” With his head down she can’t really see his face, but from his nonreaction she can guess that this isn’t a winning argument. “Look, we have a breather now. You can figure out how to make your plan work without Grace or you can get one of the other angels to help with that part of it. There is _no reason_ to hang on to something that’s hurting you any more. Are you listening to me?”

Cas continues to stare down at the bed. Mary grabs his knee and gives it a little shake. “You are not five years old. Look me in the eye and tell me you heard what I said.”

Cas knocks her hand away and pulls back. “You have _all died,”_ he says, and Mary’s shocked out of her anger when she sees that there are tears in his eyes. “All of you, at least once. I rescued both of your sons from _Hell_. I have healed all of you more times than I care to count. You can’t ask me - you have all _died.”_ His voice breaks on the last word.

“Oh, _Cas,”_ she murmurs, gathering him up. “I know, baby. I know. I know how scary that is, okay?”

“Humans are so fragile,” Cas continues, his voice a little muffled by her shoulder. “Things that an angel wouldn’t even notice break you apart inside. Something as small as - as a germ can cause you misery or even death. There are _so many_ things that can cause you death, Mary.”

“You can’t think about it like that,” Mary says quietly, stroking his hair. “I know you want to protect us and I love you for that, but it’s not your responsibility, okay? That’s why we make friends and allies and find people to watch our backs, so that one person doesn’t have to shoulder the burden for everything. I’m a hunter, sweetie, I know how hard it is to give up an advantage, but our biggest advantage is you being okay, do you understand?”

Cas pushes back on her a little bit, but she doesn’t let go and he slumps back against her. “If something happens to one of you and I have to stand there and know I could have fixed it -”

“Switch the pronouns, kiddo,” Mary says quietly. “What if I have to stand there and watch you? Or what if it’s Dean or Sam? Can you imagine what they’d think if they knew it could have been prevented?” It’s probably dirty pool to lay that scenario out for him, but she’s past playing nice and she can tell by the way a shiver passes through him that the image hits home. “We live dangerous lives, sweetheart. We’ve got to protect ourselves from the stuff we can actually see coming, because otherwise we won’t have a chance against the rest.”

Cas breathes out shakily, and for a moment they just sit there in silence. Mary lets him work through it.

“I don’t…” Cas says finally. “I don’t know if I can alter the plan enough. To work without my Grace.”

“Well, we can give it a try when we get back to the bunker, how about that?” Mary offers, rubbing his back. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Cas sighs again and shakes his head. “Not yet. Not if it’s going to change.”

“Okay. You don’t have to.” She gives him a little squeeze. “Getting rid of your Grace, though, I think you’ve got to do that.”

Cas tenses instinctively and then slowly, deliberately, relaxes again. “I don’t want to.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He rests his forehead against her shoulder for a moment, and then leans back. “Rebekah will have to help me. I’d be able to get rid of normal Grace but I’m not sure about it now.”

“Okay.” She gives the back of his neck a squeeze and then lets go. “We can call Rebekah and have her meet us at the bunker.”

Cas nods.

“Hey.” She waits until he looks up and then holds out her hand. “I think I saw some ice cream downstairs. You want some?”

He tilts his head at her, confused. He still looks shaky and upset, but at least he also looks interested. “At three in the morning?”

“Well, we don’t have any pie,” Mary says, shrugging.

He takes a deep breath and then slips his hand into hers. “Yes. I think I would like some ice cream.”

“Okay.” She disentangles herself from the bedding and pulls him to his feet. “We’ll have to be quiet, because if we wake anyone else up we’ll have to share.”

He stops. “Can we wake Sam?”

Mary smiles. “Sure, kiddo. Let’s wake Sam.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, remember all the way back in Chapter One when I said that depending on the way Season 9 goes this story might be one big long coping mechanism? 
> 
> ...Yeah. _Accurate_. If you thought Dean might have been a little OOC-caring in this chapter it’s because *hands over ears* THAT’S THE WAY HE IS LA LA LA LA LA GTFO CROWLEY NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE.
> 
> Also, T’Pau is from the (in)famous original series _Star Trek_ episode ‘Amok Time’ (among others), in which Spock goes into heat and then wrestles with Kirk for like twenty minutes onscreen while out of his head on sexy-time hormones. (T’Pring was not the only one who wanted to tank that arranged marriage if you get what I’m saying, Power Trio 4ever.) It’s also a Wikipedia-real Enochian angel name. I swear I’m not making any of this up. 
> 
> (Wikipedia might be, though. You can never tell with those guys.)
> 
>  **ETA:** The always-awesome [Bluesy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chew/pseuds/Bluesy) illustrated the scene of Dean waking Mary up from her nightmare! You can see it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1782544).


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Some blood, some violence, several people have potty mouths. A sort-of car crash. Discussion of fatal illness. Sudden violence against a main character (but don’t worry, he’ll be fine). Also, for any readers who might be more sensitive to suspense **(minor spoilers ahead)** : things start to go poorly for our heroes in the next few chapters, but I reiterate my promise that this is ultimately a story with a happy ending and I swear that everything will turn out okay. This is just the dramatic maybe-we’ll-lose-no-wait-look-triumph part of the story cycle. If you’re worried about any details you can always askbox me [here](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/ask). Or, if you’d rather wait and read the whole arc all in one go, things will really start going right in Chapter 21.
> 
> SPOILERS: 7x01 ‘Meet the New Boss’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Driving routes like whoa. Seriously, my cheat-sheet map thing is getting _so crowded._  
>  NEW TAGS: At some point I must have managed to delete the ‘sick Cas’ tag I used to have when I first started writing this story, so I’ve put it back up. I suppose that makes it a _semi_ -new tag.  
> NOTES: Ahahaha, I just realised that when I plotted out my chapters I labeled them ‘chapter 20, chapter 21, chapter 24, epilogue!’ So, yeah. I’ve fixed the chapter count now. Mathy stuff: not my forte! *jazzhands*
> 
> Also, someone in the Bookmarks section tagged this story ‘#Hail Mary full of win #Blessed art thou among hunters’. YES GOOD I LIKE IT :D

Mary wakes up the next morning when Sam rolls over, bangs his elbow on the leg of the coffee table, and whines “I could have slept in a real bed, _why_ am I on the floor again?”

“Ice cream,” Cas mumbles from where he’s improbably curled himself up into an armchair that really doesn’t have enough room for him.

“It was good ice cream,” Mary says thoughtfully. She vaguely remembers having a discussion with Sam and Cas late last night, after they’d polished off the pint of ice cream, about… what was it? The Apocrypha? She can’t really remember how it turned out, she just remembers Sam’s words getting further and further apart, and Cas’s voice getting deeper and less distinct as he started to fall asleep, and she’d just closed her eyes for a moment…

Still, somehow she’d scored the couch, so hey. She stretches happily.

“I smell pancakes,” Sam says, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Ow, my back.”

“Tamara or Isaac must be up,” Mary says, standing up so she can bend over and touch her toes.

Cas cocks his head. “No, but it’s someone… familiar.” He tries to get up and stumbles badly, frowning. “My legs are tingling. Is that supposed to happen?”

“Yep, sorry about that,” Sam says, giving Cas a none-too-gentle pat on the knee. 

Cas gives him an offended look. Mary’s glad to see that he doesn’t look as fragile as he’d been last night; she’s going to keep a sharp eye on him until they can get back to the bunker and Rebekah, but at least for the moment he seems to be okay. The impromptu ice cream party last night - and Sam’s presence at it - had definitely helped.

“If you three will stop playing around and set the table we could maybe eat before the end of the world,” a voice calls from the kitchen.

Mary immediately abandons her stretching and hurries to the kitchen. “Missouri?”

Missouri turns around from where she is, indeed, standing by the stove with a spatula in her hand. “Hello, Mary. How are you all doing?”

“It’s good to see you!” Mary says, coming forward for a hug. From the grin on Missouri’s face, she’s very much enjoying how surprised they all are by her unexpected appearance. “I almost called you yesterday. You must be psychic or something.”

“Oh, for -” Missouri snaps, and whacks Mary with the spatula. “Get off and go set the table. Sam, Castiel, it’s nice to see you as well.”

Cackling, Mary does as she’s told.

The others straggle downstairs as the smell of pancakes permeates the house and soon they’re all gathered by the table. The angels still look a little worn out, and Aaoxaif complains at length that before the Fall she would have been able to do the cleansing spell all by herself and suffered no ill effects from it.

“Are you all going to be okay?” Mary asks Tpau in an undertone, worried by the long-term implications of this.

“Oh, yes. Aaoxaif is just a little bitter,” Tpau assures her. “The Force is still with us.”

“Aha,” Mary says.

After breakfast Tamara and Omia go to check on the town and make sure everything’s all right, and Isaac calls to check in with Dean and find out if they’re needed elsewhere. By the time Tamara and Omia return to report that everything’s going as well as could be expected in a half-trashed town full of former flesh-eating zombies, Isaac’s almost done packing their stuff.

“The life of a hunter,” he sighs, but he looks cheerful about it. “Always on the road, always another crisis. It’s been a pleasure, everyone.”

Mary waits patiently until Tamara and her group have gone, and Sam, Cas, and Aaoxaif have gone upstairs to freshen up, and then she corners Missouri in the kitchen.

“So,” she says, drawing the word out. “Not that it isn’t great to see you, but is something up?”

Missouri shrugs. “Not this time, unfortunately. I was just in the area and I could use a ride as far as the bunker.”

Mary nods. “It’ll be a tight fit, but we can do that.” It also means that Mary will probably have to sit between Cas and Aaoxaif, but maybe one or both of them will sleep most of the way. Hope springs eternal. “Last time you said you were going to check out the spirit situation. Did you find anything out?”

Missouri makes a face. “Yes, but unfortunately there’s not much we can do about it.” She pours herself another cup of coffee and leans back against the counter. “I was right when I thought there were too many spirits around during the resurrection. As far as I can tell, whoever or whatever used to be in Heaven to oversee admitting new souls either isn’t there or isn’t working any more.”

Mary frowns. “Just Heaven? And what does that mean, ultimately?”

“Hell seems to be ticking over pretty well, ironically,” Missouri says, but it actually makes sense once Mary thinks about it. Cas had said that one of Abaddon’s goals in unleashing the Croatoan virus was likely to collect more souls for herself. Even if everything else is breaking down, she’d see to it that that much was still working. Metatron probably just doesn’t care.

“As for what it means ultimately,” Missouri continues, “it’s harder to say. In the short term, a lot more hauntings and disturbances, plus the larger theological problem of nobody going to Heaven any more. Am I right in guessing that this stuff has pretty much slid under the radar?”

“You’re right,” Mary sighs. Between supernatural viruses and superpowered throwdowns, nobody’s doing regular hunting gigs anymore. She’s not sure if anyone’s been paying attention to it, but she’d bet that the rate of everyday supernatural upsets has gone through the roof in the past few weeks.

“Pretty much,” Missouri says, picking up on her thoughts. “I’m not arguing with the way you all are handling this, by the way. The bigger problems have to come first. It’s just something to keep in mind, I guess.”

“Well, we might be able to do something about it now,” Mary says thoughtfully. “At least on a basic level, anyway - being able to contain and cure the Croatoan virus will free up a lot of hunters. Don’t know what there is to do about Heaven, though. That seems pretty far out of our league.”

“Hmm,” Missouri says thoughtfully. “With the right spells we could probably push individual souls through, since the passageways are technically open and it’s just the mechanism that’s faulty, as it were. It’s not practical given the scope, though... well, we’ll sort it out somehow. What’s your plan for today?”

“We need to get Cas back to the bunker,” Mary says immediately. She’d texted Dean last night and asked him to find Rebekah, and he’d responded in gratifyingly short order to say she’d be waiting for them when they got back. “It’s not a drop-everything-and-run situation quite yet, though, so I’d say we have about an hour before we should be on the road.” That should give her time to call her mom and see if her cold’s any better after a night’s rest. It feels a little weird to be fretting over her mother this way, but she decides not to worry about it. “I’m planning a direct route back.” She grimaces. “Well, I’m planning a direct route for Sam to take back. It seems mean to stick someone his height in the backseat, so he’ll be driving unless you want to do it.”

“I’m fine as a passenger,” Missouri says, eyes twinkling.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Deanna’s and Dorothy’s phones both go directly to voicemail, which Mary doesn’t let herself get too preoccupied by because they’ve been having a bit of a phone-charging learning curve, so they are indeed on the road within an hour. Mary does wind up in the back between Cas and Aaoxaif, but Missouri commandeers the radio and somehow manages to get the rest of the car’s occupants to sing along with her, effectively preventing any bickering. Cas doesn’t really have much of a singing voice and tends to trail along about half a word behind everyone else, but Aaoxaif is surprisingly good at it.

Dean calls when they’ve been on the road for about an hour and a half, and Mary gestures for Missouri to turn the music down. They’ve been texting on and off all morning (apparently one of Linda’s aliases has made such an impression that some lieutenant colonel wants to recommend her for a promotion), but if he’s calling instead it’s probably something important.

“Hi, kiddo,” Mary says. “I bet -”

“Get off the main roads right now,” Dean says.

“Sam, get off the highway,” Mary relays. Sam immediately starts signalling for the next turnoff as Missouri kills the music, the lighthearted mood in the car replaced with tense alertness. Mary turns on her phone’s speaker and holds it up so everyone else can listen in. “Dean, what’s happened?”

“Angel-demon battle spilled over into Colby and took out a National Guard Armory,” Dean says, his tone clipped and distracted. “Word got out before Charlie could squash it. Some dipshit bystander put it on the internet. The government’s calling it an act of terror and locking down the area. You need to get on back roads and get the hell out of there.”

He’s right - they might get past a cursory look, but anything more than that will turn up a bunch of fake IDs and enough illegal weapons to make for a decent arms sale. Mary’s not even sure what the military or the police might think of the various bits of supernatural paraphernalia, but she bets it’ll make them get all pensive and that won’t do anybody any good. She doesn’t know what the government does to suspected terrorists these days, but it sure wasn’t anything to look forward to in the eighties.

“We’re off the highway,” Sam calls back. “We can swing further south to avoid Colby - do you know what their radius is going to be?”

“Not yet,” Dean says tersely. “Look, I’ve got to keep spreading the word. Did Isaac and Tamara get off okay?”

“Headed towards New Mexico this morning,” Mary says. “They should be clear. We’ll be careful, Dean - we’ll let you know if anything happens.”

“Yeah, keep me in the loop,” Dean says. “Drive safe.”

He hangs up and Mary turns to Missouri. “You got anything?”

Missouri frowns. “Not really. If we were closer I might have felt echoes of the battle, but we’re far enough away that even something that big is out of my range. If I can concentrate hard enough I might be able to spot someone looking for us, though.”

Their original route would have taken them within twenty minutes of Colby. Mary shivers. “Okay, do what you can. Sam, you need any help navigating?”

“Might as well grab the map,” Sam says. “I think I’ll be okay, but it can’t hurt to have you follow along.” His grip on the steering wheel isn’t quite white-knuckled, he’s had too much experience with tense situations for that, but he’s definitely a little wired. He glances up at her in the rearview mirror. “Did we have anybody in Colby, do you know?”

“I’m not sure,” Mary says. Charlie had mentioned that there were some worrying signs around Colby... yesterday? the day before?... so it’s possible. She’d wanted them to take an alternate route, but Mary had been so anxious to get Cas back to the bunker she’d decided against it.

_Great planning there. A+._

“They’re setting up a checkpoint somewhere to our left,” Missouri murmurs. There’s sweat on her forehead and she looks a little ill from concentrating so hard. “Can you go right?”

Sam turns, and Mary scrambles for the map to make sure they don’t end up cornered anywhere. To her side, Aaoxaif says in a quiet voice “What will happen if we are stopped, Castiel?”

Cas doesn’t answer but Mary hears him turn, and after a moment Aaoxaif says “Ah,” in a flat tone.

“Frightened people do not often react well to confusion,” Cas says, almost apologetically, and it takes Mary a moment to realise he’s apologising to the humans in the car.

“Neither do frightened angels,” Aaoxaif says grimly. Mary wonders if that’s an indictment of her species’ past behavior or a warning about what she might do herself if they’re stopped.

“Soldiers up ahead and to the right,” Missouri says, and they have to alter their course again.

“Mom, do we still have a way out?” Sam asks. His voice is even, but she can see the tension in his shoulders.

“It’s getting a little narrow,” Mary admits. “There’s what looks like an old access road about a mile ahead - if we can get to that I think we might be able to slip past them long enough to get clear.” Hopefully. There aren’t many ways to get off the access road once they’re on it.

Sam floors the accelerator. Mary takes a moment to text Dean ( _Still ok_ ). It might not be true for much longer, but it should buy him a few moments’ peace. If she knows her son, and by now she’s pretty sure she does, he’s doing some industrial-level freaking out at the thought of them out here and unprotected.

Sure enough, a second later he sends back _Good keep txting_.

Missouri has her hands pressed to the sides of her head now. Mary’s not sure what kind of a toll using her powers this way is taking on her, but it doesn’t look fun.

“I’ll just need some painkillers,” Missouri grits out. Mary winces - she can’t imagine that the on-edge people in the car are making her job any easier. “There’s another group… behind us, I think? No, they turned. But there’s something - Sam! Up ahead!”

Sam swears and throws the car into reverse, but it’s too late. There’s an army-green truck ahead of them and it accelerates as soon as it catches sight of them. Sam might be able to outrun them if he can get the car turned around, but there’s still the question of an escape route.

“The other group turning back our way,” Missouri says grimly. “I think they radioed in for help. They’ll be behind us in a minute.”

“ _Shit,”_ Sam says under his breath, hitting the brakes. “Mom, what’s the terrain look like? Can we run for it, find somewhere to hide?”

“It looks pretty open,” Mary says, her heart in her mouth. “Farmland, mostly. A couple of rivers. Not much for cover.”

“How many people are there, Missouri?” Cas asks, his voice utterly calm.

“Two ahead, three behind,” Missouri grits, digging the heels of her hands into her forehead. Out the windshield, Mary sees the truck come to a stop about fifteen feet from their front bumper. She turns to look behind; the second truck is rolling to a stop as well. They wouldn’t get far if they ran now.

“Move fast, stay low,” Cas says. “Try not to hurt anyone, Aaoxaif.”

“Cas, wait, _no -_ ” Mary says, grabbing for him, but he’s already pushed the door open and stepped out. She lunges, but her seatbelt holds her back, and in the moment it takes her to free herself Aaoxaif is out of the car as well, running full-tilt towards the truck in front.

Mary swears and scrambles for the door.

“Mom, don’t!” Sam shouts, panicked, and manages to grab the back of her shirt, pulling her off-balance. “Mom, they’ll shoot -”

There’s a gunshot from the front and another two from behind and they all duck instinctively. Sam lets go of Mary’s shirt and Mary takes the opportunity to crawl sideways out the door, pulling her gun from her waistband as she goes. Her instinct is to go for Cas, who is unwell and more outnumbered, but he’s also the only one of the two angels with combat experience. She turns to give Aaoxaif some cover instead.

Aaoxaif has reached the truck and its two soldiers and, as Mary watches, ducks under the first soldier’s gun to slap the palm of her hand on his forehead. He crumples immediately, but the move has given the second soldier enough time to round the front of the truck and get Aaoxaif in his sights. Mary fires once, blowing out one of the truck’s headlights, and the soldier jumps back. Aaoxaif launches herself at him and they both hit the ground, the soldier’s gun clattering away across the road.

Good enough. Mary crouches and makes her way around the back of the car towards Cas, gun held out and ready. She can hear Sam shouting for her to get back in the car, but she ignores it.

The second truck was further away, and Cas is just reaching it as she gets him in sight. Both truck doors are open and one soldier is standing up on the running board and using the top of the door to steady her gun. She’s definitely not expecting Cas to jump straight up onto the hood of the truck and grab the gun by the barrel, yanking it forward and dragging her into range. One palm to the forehead and she collapses.

Behind her, she hears Sam’s door open and she yells “Help Aaoxaif!” without looking back. She’d give angelic strength the edge over human fighting skills, normally, but she has no idea what kind of a fight Aaoxaif can actually put up and she’s a little worried that she hasn’t heard anything yet.

“ _God fucking -_ fine!” Sam shouts. There will be an argument later, Mary’s sure, but she can’t worry about that now.

A second soldier comes around from the back of the truck, yelling for Cas to get down on the ground with his hands behind his head, but Mary fires into the dirt between his feet and he staggers back. Cas leans over and grabs one of his arms as he flails for balance, and uses the soldier’s own momentum to smash him back against the side of the truck. He crumples, stunned or unconscious.

The remaining soldier, unfortunately, is smarter than the rest. Having had a chance to see Cas in action, she doesn’t try to shoot Cas or even get close to him. She slams the truck into reverse, sending Cas tumbling backwards off the hood and onto the ground, and then she shifts into gear and floors it.

Mary screams Cas’s name as she sees the truck bear down on him. For an instant everything is frozen - Cas sprawled on the ground, half up on one elbow but nowhere near mobile enough to get away in time; the look of intense concentration on the soldier’s face as she stares Cas down; the spiderweb cracks left in the windshield by Mary’s gun as she fires again and again in a vain attempt to make the truck stop.

And then the truck shudders sideways, tipping impossibly up and over, and Cain is standing in the road between Cas and the capsized wreck of the truck as it skids forward a few more feet and comes to a screeching stop.

Mary stares at him, stunned. He hadn’t even touched it. He must have - telekinetically, or maybe he could just move faster than she could see -

Cain catches her eye and nods once, like one general to another, and then vanishes.

“Was - was that Cain?” Sam asks, shocked. Mary glances back - he’s half-supporting Aaoxaif, who is white-faced and shaking but mobile. 

“Yeah, that was Cain.” It’s also the third time he’s saved someone close to her, and she’s not sure what to think about that. She hadn’t even had to try to convince him at all this time, and although a case could be made that he just saved Mary’s life as well as Cas’s it’s a lot less direct than pulling her out of a pit of Croats in Blue Earth.

There’s no time to think about it now, anyway. Someone’s going to notice that these soldiers aren’t reporting in, and they need to be as far away as possible. She adjusts her grip on her gun and goes to help Cas.

He’s crouched down next to the truck by the time she reaches him, checking on the driver.

“You okay?”

“I am fine,” Cas says, not looking up. If he’s shaken by his rescue or his near-death, he’s hiding it well. “The soldier has a broken leg, which will not kill her, and some internal injuries, which may.” He reaches in through the shattered windshield and touches the side of the soldier’s face. 

“Don’t use your Grace,” Mary reminds him, but it’s too late. The soldier’s color is visibly improving, and while Mary’s glad that she probably won’t die now, she’s definitely going to have a conversation with Cas that Cas will not enjoy.

As it turns out, the conversation isn’t necessary. Cas leans back, hesitates for a moment, and then turns to the side and throws up.

“Cas!” She shoves her gun into her waistband crouches down beside him, putting one hand on his back. 

He coughs, spitting bile. “That’s unpleasant,” he says hoarsely.

“Is it your Grace?” Mary asks, heart pounding. Rebekah had said - but maybe, maybe he just hit his head when he fell off the truck. Maybe this is just a concussion. It doesn’t have to be - but he’d used his Grace to knock out the first soldier, and then he healed the third, and last night he’d blocked her nightmares...

Cas straightens up, cautiously. He’s pale and his skin looks clammy, and Mary can feel him trembling slightly, none of which he should be doing. Mary remembers him right after he’d killed Theo and stolen Theo’s Grace. He hadn’t even been able to go into shock.

“Mom?” Sam jogs up behind them. “Is Cas okay?”

“I think it’s his Grace,” Mary says, watching him closely. He nods slightly, and Mary bites back hard on the first several things she wants to say (expletives, recriminations, some more expletives, a fairly embarrassing round of denial). There’s no telling how long the soldiers will be out, or who they might have called for help before they were dealt with. They need to get out of here yesterday.

“Okay. Can you stand? Sam, help me get him up.”

As Sam comes forward to help, the soldier in the truck groans and stirs, pushing herself up on one elbow. For a moment her eyes lock with Mary’s, and then Mary sees her gaze slide over to her abandoned gun, a few feet away but still within reach.

There’s no time for Mary to go for her own gun, not in the position she’s in right now, crouched down and burdened by Cas. All she can do is fling her arm sideways across Sam’s chest, as if it would actually be enough to stop a bullet.

The soldier goes for the gun and screams in agony as it jars her broken leg. She collapses before she can reach it, unconscious again, and Mary remembers to breathe.

Sam gently disentangles her hand from his shirtfront, giving her a long look that’s somewhere between surprise and something that looks a little like awe. “We’d better get going before another one wakes up.”

Mary nods, forcing herself into action again. They each grab one of Cas’s arms and get him upright. It’s a little awkward, given how many height differences are involved, but they manage to get over to the car without too much indignity, and Cas seems a little bit steadier on his feet by the time they arrive. Aaoxaif is already seated in the back being fussed over by Missouri, who straightens up as they approach.

“We’d best not run into anyone else,” she says, glancing from one angel to the other. Mary can hear Aaoxaif’s disgusted noise from outside the car.

“You get in first, Mom,” Sam says quietly, touching her lightly between the shoulderblades. “It’s probably best if you sit between them.”

Not to keep them from arguing, this time, but so she can make sure they’re both okay. Mary swallows and nods, turning back once she’s seated to help get Cas into place. He leans back heavily against the seat and closes his eyes, barely stirring when Sam returns from rummaging in the trunk to put a bucket in his lap.

Mary makes sure he’s belted in and then turns to tend to Aaoxaif while Sam’s getting into the driver’s seat. She’s slumped against the window but her eyes are open and she looks more alert than Cas is. Mary checks her seat belt. It’s fastened, but Aaoxaif is holding it away from her stomach with one hand, which seems -

“Is that blood?” Mary gasps. “Aaoxaif, did you get shot?” She starts pulling off her overshirt to use as an impromptu bandage, surprised that Missouri and Sam could have both missed the injury.

“It’s fine, it’s already healing,” Aaoxaif snaps, pushing her hand away.

“We can at least use the shirt for padding -” Mary tries, reaching again.

“I said it’s fine!” Aaoxaif says, and Mary’s surprised to hear her voice wobble.

“Okay,” Mary says reassuringly, holding her hands up. “You just let me know what you need, all right?”

Aaoxaif takes two quick breaths, like she’s trying to hold something in, and then says loudly “I am _not a soldier,_ Castiel!”

“I know,” Cas says. His voice is a little slurred. “I’m sorry, sister.”

Aaoxaif’s mouth tightens, and then she holds out her free hand to Mary. “Some padding would be welcome,” she says stiffly.

“Okay.” Mary hands over the shirt and lets Aaoxaif arrange it to her liking. “Sam, we need to get going.”

“Right.” Sam starts guiltily. “Where does the access road take us?”

“Southeast, towards Dodge City,” Mary says, digging for the map in the floorboards. “It should be about half a mile down the road, on the right.”

“I don’t sense anyone that way. At least, not yet,” Missouri volunteers.

“All right.” Sam puts the car into gear and edges around the abandoned army truck, wincing as the car jostles over the uneven ground. “I figure we go south for a while and then switch the car out. We should probably do that a couple of times, just to be safe.”

That will take them a good distance out of their way, although Mary concedes that it’s probably necessary. She glances nervously over at Cas.

“I’ll be fine,” Cas says without opening his eyes.

Sam meets her eyes in the rearview mirror and drives a little faster.

“Was that Cain on the road?”

Mary turns to Aaoxaif, a little surprised. “Sorry, what?”

“Cain,” Aaoxaif repeats, not looking away from the window. “Was that him?”

Mary glances over at Sam, who gives her a worried look. “Um. Yes, it was Cain.”

Aaoxaif closes her eyes, fists clenching, and then says steadily, “Someone explain why the _Father of Murder_ intervened and stopped that truck.”

Mary bites her lip. She’s not wild about throwing this story around, but Aaoxaif has probably earned it and Missouri knows most of it already. “The angel Muriel wants me to be Israfel’s vessel so I can end the world. Cain’s working with her and he’s sort of, um, been appointed my bodyguard until I say yes.”

Aaoxaif gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “And will you say yes?”

“ _No,”_ Mary says firmly.

Aaoxaif shakes her head and goes back to staring out the window, and when Mary tries to see if she’s okay she refuses to respond. After a moment of worry, Mary decides to give her some time to think before she tries again.

The access road, by some measure of probably-not-divine providence, turns out to be long-abandoned and nearly grassed-over, which is ideal for their purposes. Sam pulls onto it and drives until the main road is out of sight, then stops for a moment to check his phone. A little guiltily, Mary pulls hers out as well and finds several texts from Dean, with increasing levels of worry and anger.

_Sorry - small hiccup. Detouring south. Still ok,_ Mary writes back. It’s only barely accurate, but it won’t do Dean any good to know exactly how close they came to disaster.

“This road doesn’t even show up on GPS,” Sam says, putting his phone away and pushing down on the accelerator again. He sounds impressed. “Guess that’s a mark in favor of older technology.”

Mary’s phone buzzes. _Keep txting dammit_.

_Language_ , Mary fires back, and turns to check on her charges. Aaoxaif’s color looks a bit better already, and she’s sitting up straighter, although the way she’s pointedly turned away from the rest of them suggests she’s still upset. Cas hasn’t moved at all, but he opens his eyes a little when she puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him a shake.

“I’ll be fine, Mary,” he says.

“I’m going to need more detail,” Mary says, gently but firmly. 

“I…” Cas says, and doesn’t seem to know where to go from there. She’s not sure if that’s his natural reticence, or if he doesn’t want to worry her, or… or if it scares him too much to say it out loud.

“Just let me know,” Mary says, lowering her voice. “Are we on a - a timeline now?” It’s as close as she can make herself come to _is this killing you_.

“Yes, I think so,” Cas says, his voice barely audible.

Mary’s stomach clenches. “Okay,” she says, keeping her voice calm. “What kind of scale?”

He tries a smile, which isn’t particularly effective. “We’ll have plenty of time to get back to the bunker.”

It’s not exactly an answer, and for a moment she’s tempted to push, but then Cas reaches over and takes her hand. He holds it tightly, and she realises that he _is_ scared. Cas is brave, she knows that very well, but walking into certain death with a sword in one hand is very different from being able to see it coming and having no defense.

“Will Rebekah still be able to help?” she asks.

Cas nods, a little firmer now. “Yes. That has not changed.”

“Okay.” She kisses his temple. “That’s good, then. Do you need anything?”

He shakes his head, and after a moment closes his eyes again. He doesn’t let go of her hand.

_I pray to the angel Rebekah,_ Mary thinks as she watches the overgrown road pass by them. _Cas really isn’t doing well. We’re getting to the bunker as fast as we can but we’re going to need help once we arrive._

She has no idea if Rebekah will receive the message, and she has no way to confirm its arrival, but it makes her feel a little better.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They get off the access road a few miles north of Dodge City, shortly after Missouri says she senses someone on the road behind them. They find a mostly-full parking lot outside a box store and keep their heads down while Missouri makes her way through the rows of vehicles, putting her hand on each one before stopping by a battered blue four-door.

“This one,” she says serenely. “The owner deserves it.”

Sam boosts the car while Mary helps the angels move and Missouri grabs their supplies. Aaoxaif is physically fine now, as promised, albeit silent and pulled in on herself. She seems inclined to keep Mary’s overshirt, too, which Mary wasn’t expecting but doesn’t mind. Cas manages pretty well too, only needing a little bit of help, although there’s a long moment after he’s seated in which they both think he’ll throw up again. 

This far south there doesn’t seem to be much of a military presence, at least so far, but Mary notices a lot more police patrolling than usual and she can only imagine that will increase once their car is found. Accordingly, hey only keep the second car as far as Dodge City itself, and then they swap it out for a different one and turn north. Dean calls as they’re pulling away from the scene of their latest crime, snug in the back of an SUV that Missouri assures them belongs to an embezzler.

“So,” Dean says, skipping over any greeting. “Got any explanation for why Charlie’s getting reports of four people driving your car beating the shit out of a group of National Guardsmen?”

Ah. Crap. “Well, it’s probably because we ran into a couple of National Guardsmen and had to… dissuade them from following us,” Mary says calmly. “And technically there were five of us. Missouri says hi.”

Dean mutters something under his breath that Mary’s pretty sure is a curse. “You can’t not - you have to _tell_ -” he cuts himself off and for a moment it’s just silent. Sam catches her eye in the rearview mirror and gives her a commiseratory wince. 

“Look,” Dean says finally, sounding tired. “Just, just make your way here. Okay? Was anyone hurt?”

“We’ll be fine once we get back to the bunker,” Mary says, sidestepping the question as much as possible. “We’re clear for the moment. We switched cars outside of Dodge City and we’re headed back north.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Mary hears papers rustling in the background. “They’ve got descriptions of you, Cas, and Aaoxaif and they’ve sent them out to law enforcement, so watch where you go, all right? You should probably swing out further east instead of coming straight north. Charlie’s got a pretty good lock on where the roadblocks and checkpoints are, but it’s better safe than sorry.”

“We can head for Salina and go up from there,” Mary says, flipping through their road map.

“That’s, what, two hours?” Dean says. “And then two hours northwest to the bunker, probably… you’d better find somewhere to sit overnight in Salina or you’ll be breaking the curfew.”

Mary makes a face. It rubs her wrong to be that close to help for Cas and not take advantage of it. “I’d rather push through.”

“I’d rather not have to break you guys out of _federal prison,”_ Dean snaps. “Will you just play it safe for once?”

Mary glances over at Cas. ‘Playing it safe’ isn’t exactly as well-defined a term as Dean might think.

“A night’s rest would be welcome,” Cas murmurs without opening his eyes.

Mary really hopes he’s saying that because it’s what he needs and not because he thinks it’s what will be best for everyone else. “We’ll overnight in Salina.”

“ _Thank_ you.” Dean sighs, and then says a little more quietly, “How’s Cas doing?”

She doesn’t want to worry him, but she’ll concede that it’s not entirely fair to keep him so much in the dark. It’s kind of hypocritical to boot, given her argument with Cas last night. “Hanging in there,” Mary says finally.

“That bad, huh?” Dean says dryly. “Well, Rebekah got in about an hour ago, so she’ll be ready to help when you get here. _Tomorrow.”_

“How’s everything going in the wider world?”

Dean groans. “The spells you guys worked up are a huge help with the virus, but this whole Colby mess is kind of blowing up all over the place - the conspiracy nuts are starting to put things together and stuff is spreading faster than Charlie can squash it. We’re trying to come up with a workable strategy for dealing with Abaddon and the angel douches once we have the manpower, but we don’t have much yet. And the government crackdowns aren’t helping. Walt and Roy got nabbed outside of Amherst and Tracy’s still trying to get them out.”

“Oh, man,” Mary says, wincing. She’d bet Dean hasn’t had more than a few hours of sleep at a time in days. “Well, when we get to the bunker we should be able to help out some. Give you some breathing space, at least.”

“You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that,” Dean says fervently. “Look, I’ve got to go. You guys keep your heads down, okay?”

“Will do,” Mary says. She waits until he’s hung up and then raises her voice. “So, we’re going to head for Salina. Also they’ve got our descriptions out there.”

“Well, that should be fun,” Sam sighs. “Okay, everybody keep an eye out.”

Missouri gives the radio a regretful look and turns her attention out the window. 

Aside from a few tense moments as they pass a state trooper in the middle of interrogating a driver by the side of the road, the rest of the drive is made in silence. By the time Sam pulls them to a stop in a parking lot between a battered Motel 6 and a dollar store with a hand-lettered sign enthusiastically advertising “1000s of Itmes $ & Up!!!” they’re all starting to feel the strain from the day’s vigilance.

For a long moment they just sit and stare at the motel.

“It’s possible that nobody’s circulated our descriptions to hotels yet,” Sam says after a moment. “And if one or two of us slept in the car it would call less attention. We might be able to get a room.”

“We can’t risk it,” Mary says regretfully. Staying in the car isn’t going to lead to a very good night’s sleep, but it’s better than being arrested for terrorism. At least the SUV has more room than the four-door they’d started off with, and the tinted windows will make it harder to see that there are people sleeping in it.

Sam ventures into the dollar store and returns with a box of plastic spoons and several cans of chili and beef stew, and everyone but Aaoxaif has cold gloppy soup for dinner. It's a fairly disgusting meal, but it's protein and at least no one will go to bed on an empty stomach.

Missouri ends up getting the middle bench seat, and Sam folds down the furthest back seat and transfers their stuff to the footwells so he and Cas can (more or less) stretch out. Mary and Aaoxaif, as the smallest, wind up in the passenger’s and driver’s seats respectively. Fortunately, even given the effort she’d had to put into healing herself, Aaoxaif insists she won’t need sleep. It won’t be comfortable or interesting for her, but having her alert and ready to drive at a moment’s notice while the rest of them are sleeping eases a lot of Mary’s worries.

Well, for the most part. “Do you know how to drive?”

“It can’t be that complicated,” Aaoxaif says disdainfully. It’s the most she’s sounded like herself since the fight, so Mary decides to take it as a good sign.

Unsurprisingly, given the bed in question and their exposed location, it takes Mary a little while to fall asleep. She finally dozes off somewhere around midnight, only to wake up again when someone in the back rolls over. She shifts into a marginally more comfortable position and tries again.

She’s certain she’ll spend the rest of the night in the same half-awake and vaguely irritated state, so it’s a bit of a surprise to look over at the driver’s seat and see Muriel instead of Aaoxaif.

“What, no nightmares?” Mary snaps before she can stop herself.

“I’m sorry for your discomfort,” Muriel says seriously. “I understand that humans have different ways of processing information and I had hoped that you would be more responsive to a visual argument.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve given up on that now,” Mary says. She’s not entirely sure what answer she’s hoping for - the nightmares have been awful and sometimes actively horrific, but she can’t shake the feeling that these conversations are actually more dangerous.

“Were you injured during the fight with the soldiers, Mary?” Muriel says, ignoring this.

“I’m fine,” Mary says cautiously. “I guess Cain gave you a rundown.”

“He did.” She turns in her seat and leans over until there are only a few inches separating the two of them. “Mary, those were your own people trying to kill you. They would have killed your child and your friends as well.”

Mary shrugs. “Shit happens.” She can see what Muriel’s getting at, here, but she’s disinclined to indulge her. Yeah, the soldiers might have killed them. But as far as the soldiers knew, they were trying to apprehend dangerous and resourceful people who had already destroyed a military base using some kind of weapon that had never been seen before. It’s enough to make anyone a little twitchy.

“You should not be so cavalier about such violence!”

Mary blinks, surprised. Muriel looks genuinely upset. “I take violence very seriously, Muriel. I just fail to see how ending the world is an appropriate response to it.”

Muriel turns away and grips the steering wheel for a moment. “You cannot see the world the way I do,” she says finally, her tone clipped. “You cannot see the pain, the suffering, and you cannot understand how much worse it will get. There are so many people, all crying out for help, Mary, and you cannot hear it and it will be _so much louder_ \- there is only one thing I can do to help, and you won’t let me!”

“You don’t see what I see either, Muriel,” Mary says quietly. This is unusually emotional for Muriel, and she’s not entirely sure what’s set her off. “I see people fighting for life. I see people helping each other. There are terrible things in the world, you’re right about that, but there are wonderful things too. I’m sorry that you can’t see them the way I do.”

“I used to,” Muriel says dully. “I used to think that it all balanced out. There might be angels going away for discipline and coming back changed, but at least they came back. I might have been terrified that it would happen to me, too, but it hadn’t yet, and that was something. I still had my archives, and Heaven, and my fellow angels…” her voice breaks. “And then my fellow angels died, and Heaven burned, and so did everything else, and I realised that we were a force for destruction, not for good.”

“Heaven’s still there, Muriel,” Mary says softly. “Maybe there’s a way back in. If we worked together -”

“It’s not still there!” Muriel says shrilly. “It was destroyed in the war! It was destroyed by _Castiel!_ Everything has been taken and now humanity stands on the brink of destruction as well. Do you want only Hell to be left? Do you have any idea what that will be like?”

Mary stares at her, alarmed by her vehemence. “I thought you said you didn’t blame Cas.”

Muriel scowls. “Castiel was a good angel. He was just and righteous and loyal and they still managed to turn him into a monster.” She leans over again, her eyes boring into Mary’s. “ _Imagine what they will do to you.”_

Mary jerks back instinctively, and there’s a confused moment where her shoulder hits the car door and Muriel is somehow simultaneously herself and Aaoxaif, and then the dream shudders away to be replaced by Aaoxaif’s unimpressed frown.

“You should have told her to quiet herself sooner,” she says.

Mary blinks at her, heart pounding. In the backseat Missouri rolls over and mumbles something about jam. 

“Could you hear all that?”

Aaoxaif shrugs and looks away, abruptly disinterested again. “Not as such. I could see the outlines.”

Mary pushes herself upright, taking a moment to glance back at the others. Missouri is barely visible in the darkness, but a streetlight shining through the back window shows the vague shapes of Cas curled up in a tight ball and Sam awkwardly jammed up against the side window. “What do you think about her plan?”

“To destroy the world?” Aaoxaif says, eyebrows arching. “Shortsighted.”

Mary laughs a little. “I guess that’s one way to put it.”

Aaoxaif watches her for a long moment. Her face is mostly obscured by shadows. “Go to sleep, Mary,” she says finally. “There will be battles to fight in the morning and I don’t plan to fight them alone.” She cocks her head. “Or at all, if I can help it.”

“I’m sorry you got dragged into the one yesterday,” Mary says. She’s pleased Aaoxaif is talking again. She might be abrasive and belligerent, but it’s unsettling to have her be silent as well. 

Aaoxaif snorts. “You’d rather it was me than Sam. That’s as it should be.”

“All right, fair enough,” Mary allows. Aaoxaif isn’t the type to beat around the bush, so she just goes for it. “Are you angry with us about the Cain thing?”

Aaoxaif raises her eyebrows. “Angry? No. I dislike it, but there are many things I dislike. I have learned to overcome.” This last bit is said with an air of such grim suffering that Mary smiles a little. Aaoxaif rolls her eyes. “Now go to sleep. Humans are useless without it.”

Mary does as she’s told.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The next morning they stumble awake, stiff and bleary-eyed, and groggily exchange places until everyone is upright and belted in. Sam drives them down the road until they find a gas station with no cop cars, at which point Missouri volunteers to acquire coffee. Even the angels partake, although from the look on Aaoxaif’s face every time she takes a sip she’s not sure this was a wise decision.

Mary texts Dean conscientiously the entire time, still a little embarrassed about her decision to keep their altercation outside of Colby from him. At the time it had seemed sensible, inasmuch as she thought about it at all beyond a kneejerk desire to keep him from worrying, but the more she thinks about it the worse she feels. She knows very well how it feels to be kept in the dark about something important, and she’d given Cas quite a talking-to for doing it to her. 

If Dean reads anything into the increased rate of text messages - and the shift from subjects like _still ok_ to ones like _stopped in Glasco for coffee, no cops_ \- he doesn’t say, but he does respond to each one. Given how much else he’s dealing with at the same time, he must be feeling pretty anxious about their trip to pay such close attention to his phone. 

They wind up having to circumnavigate Lebanon due to worries about the increased police presence, and by the time they reach the bunker Dean and Rebekah are both standing outside waiting for them. Rebekah looks as serene as ever, but Dean has his arms crossed and he looks distinctly unamused.

“Great,” Sam sighs.

“He’s probably just worried,” Mary says, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “You did an awesome job, sweetie.”

He gives her a grateful look and gets out of the car, heading for the backseat so he can give Cas a hand getting out. Cas looks better than yesterday, although not by much, and when they get him upright he leans back against the side of the car and says “I think I would like to just stay here for a moment, please.”

Mary gives him a skeptical look. “You want to sit down?”

He shakes his head. “No. I would like the fresh air. It is… a slightly different experience for an angel than it is for a human.” He looks stiff and awkward as he says this, and Mary feels a momentary pang. She’s been so wrapped up in the practicalities of Cas’s ailing Grace that she’d forgotten that losing it meant more than simply not being able to heal others any more. She’s never really gotten a comprehensive explanation for what the differences are between angelic and human senses, but she knows there is one.

“Okay,” she says, straightening his coat collar for him. “We’ll give you a couple of minutes, how’s that? Sam, why don’t you guys start bringing our stuff in? I’m going to have a word with Dean.”

Cas tips his head back against the side of the car and looks up at the sky, breathing deeply, and Sam nods. Mary turns towards Dean and Rebekah.

“He okay?” Dean asks gruffly as she nears.

“He’s just taking a moment,” Mary assures him. “Hello, Rebekah.”

“It is good to see you, Mary,” Rebekah says warmly, and then gets completely distracted by Missouri. “You have power, child,” she says in surprise.

“Sure do,” Missouri says modestly.

Mary smiles and steps to the side so they’ll have room to talk and nearly runs into Sam, carrying the first load of things from the car. Aaoxaif is still by the trunk, scowling at someone’s duffel bag.

“Hey, Sam,” Dean says.

Sam stops, looking a little apprehensive. “Hey. How’s everything in the bunker?”

Dean shrugs. “Pretty crazy. You’ll get to enjoy it in a minute. Uh, good work out there. You did a good job.”

Sam smiles, surprised. “Thanks. Group effort. I’m, um, going to take this stuff down.”

“Yeah, sure.” Dean waits until his brother’s gone and then heaves a breath. “My life is like _ten years_ shorter after the last few days.”

“You did great, kiddo,” Mary laughs, rubbing his back. “And I owe you an apology.”

Dean shrugs, looking awkward. “You wouldn’t be the first Winchester to keep things to yourself.”

“I still should have kept you in the loop,” Mary says. “I can’t expect you boys to keep me informed if I don’t return the favor.” She eyes him. “It’s okay to be mad at me, sweetheart.”

“Maybe when I’m not just glad you all didn’t die,” Dean says dryly. “Oh, here.” He digs into his pocket, looking a little embarrassed. “I kept the car safe.”

Mary takes it from him and pretends to inspect it. “Hmm, yes, it seems to have been well cared for. And I see you put gas in the tank before you brought it back.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “All right. Let’s collect Rain Man and get this - the hell?”

There’s a complicated, muted sound from the car, almost like a giant set of wings flapping, and Mary turns in time to see someone appear right next to Cas.

“Joshua?” she says, belatedly recognizing the angel Cas had gone to for information on the angel factions. She hasn’t even thought of him since that day in the garden.

“The gardener? How come he can still fly?” Dean says, bemused.

Cas looks startled as well, pulled from his reverie. “Brother, is something wrong? You look -”

He’s cut off when Joshua pushes him back against the car and slices him across the throat with one quick slash of his angel blade.

Mary screams and starts to run, pushing past Aaoxaif and nearly knocking her to the ground. Behind her she can hear Dean trying to follow suit and Missouri yelling at him to wait a moment, but all her focus is on Cas. He’s staring at Joshua, frozen with shock, as blue-white light begins to pour from the cut on his throat and into Joshua’s mouth. 

Mary remembers this. This is the exact reverse of what happened when Cas had stolen Theo’s Grace all those weeks ago, although why Joshua would do this now is beyond her. She yanks her angel sword out of her belt as she runs, drawing her arm back as she reaches them.

Joshua turns towards her. He looks terrified, desperate, and there is blue-white light leaking from his eyes and mouth as if there’s too much for him to hold. Mary makes a snap decision and drops her sword, going for Cas instead and catching him just as his knees buckle and he falls. They land in an awkward tangle next to the car, Cas clutching his throat and Mary clutching him. Behind her, Dean has shaken free of Missouri and is running towards them, bellowing for Sam.

“Brother,” Joshua says urgently, wisps of light leaving his mouth like condensation. “You must be strong. Metatron -”

They never find out what Joshua wants to tell them about Metatron, because before he can finish speaking he tips his head back and screams. It’s echoed by Aaoxaif and Rebekah, and Mary sees Dean skid to a halt, trying to figure out where the danger is coming from. Before he can decide, an explosion of light erupts out of all of the angels, save Cas.

Mary curls herself around Cas instinctively as Dean swears and ducks. She feels _something_ rush over them, powerful and elemental and breathtaking, and then in an instant it’s gone.

She raises her head, cautiously. Joshua’s prone on the ground in front of them, still and silent. She’s not sure if he’s dead or just unconscious, and quite frankly she doesn’t much care.

“Cas?” She leans over, trying to get a look at Cas’s throat, but he’s hunched over protectively and she can’t make him move.

Dean crashes down next to them, gently helping her to pull Cas upright. “C’mon, buddy, we need to take a look, okay? No - don’t talk, don’t move your head. Blink once for yes and twice for no, got it? Can you breathe?”

Cas blinks _yes_ and Mary rubs his back. He’s pale and wide-eyed and she can see blood between his fingers, but at least he seems alert. She risks a glance back towards the bunker - Missouri is crouched down next to Aaoxaif, who’s curled up on the ground, and Rebekah is on her knees by the bunker. It looks like she’s crying.

“Good, that’s really good. Now, can you swallow for me?”

Mary turns her attention back to Cas, who swallows and winces.

“Okay, doing good,” Dean says. He digs through Cas’s coat pockets until he comes up with a handkerchief, which he folds briskly into a square. “I need to take a look at the cut, so you’re going to have to let go for a sec.”

Cas blinks _no_ , alarmed. Dean gives him a reassuring smile. “No, it’s okay, it’ll just be for a second. Okay? Ready?”

Cas doesn’t look ready at all, but he takes a breath and moves his hands. Dean slides the folded handkerchief into place and holds it there carefully. A little bit of blood seeps through, but not much, and after a moment Dean pulls the cloth back to look at the wound.

“Good, that doesn’t look too deep,” Mary says, relieved. She rubs Cas’s back again. “It might not even need stitches as long as we bandage it well and you keep still.”

“Grace,” Cas rasps, and coughs painfully. “Taken.”

“Don’t talk,” Mary admonishes him. “We saw him take your Grace, kiddo.”

“No,” Cas rasps, and gives Aaoxaif and Rebekah a pointed look.

“He took their Graces?” Dean says, frowning at Joshua’s still body.

That’s not right, though. Missouri had reacted as if Joshua wasn’t a threat, and Joshua had seemed scared, not homicidal. “Not him,” Mary realises. “Metatron.”

Dean’s eyebrows raise. “Why would he care -”

“Dean!” Sam pounds out the door of the bunker and nearly falls over Rebekah, catching himself at the last moment. “We need you down here, Hannah and Gagiel -” he stops. “Is that Joshua? What happened to Cas?”

Dean gives Mary a look of dawning horror. If the angels still within the bunker’s protections were affected as well… “Sam, has anyone called in?”

Sam blinks at him. “What? No.” He glances back through the bunker door. “I mean, I can hear the phone ringing, but what’s that got to do with anything?” He crouches down to check on Rebekah, who has tears dripping down her face. “Dean, what happened here?”

“Metatron wanted the angels to suffer,” Mary says slowly. “But we made alliances. We figured out how to stop the Croatoan virus. They were surviving instead.”

Dean’s mouth falls open as the full impact of this hits him. “You think - everyone? But - ” He looks at the bunker and then down at Cas, clearly torn.

“Go,” Mary says. “I can take care of Cas. You need to find out how bad this is.”

Dean’s jaw tightens, and then he gives Cas’s shoulder a squeeze and stands up. “Sam, get everyone down in the bunker. Missouri, can you keep an eye on the angels? You can use the library. Mom, you take care of Cas and then meet me in the atrium. We need to check in with all the field teams and see how far this goes. Charlie! Find someone who can tell me if the containment fields are still holding!” 

His voice trails off as he vanishes down into the bunker. Mary takes a deep breath and pushes away everything that isn’t immediately in front of her. “Cas, hold the handkerchief for a moment, please. I need to check on Joshua.” She guides Cas’s hand to the right place and lets go when she’s sure he’s got it. Joshua is alive, technically, but he’s unconscious and his pulse and respiration are low. She turns back to Cas. She’ll deal with the more mobile angels first.

“I’m going to patch you up and you can rest in my room while we deal with the others, all right?”

“I can help,” Cas says stubbornly. His voice is a good deal more gravelly than usual and he winces involuntarily when he’s done speaking. “I want to help. What Metatron just did -”

“You just had your throat slit and you can barely talk,” Mary says sharply. She understands Cas’s anger, she really does, but she’s not going to let him use it as an excuse to put himself in more danger. There’s been enough of that foolishness already. “You’re going to lie down quietly if I have to tie you to the bed.”

Cas scowls. Mary glances over at Missouri and the angels - Aaoxaif is staring blankly into space and Rebekah is openly sobbing as Sam gently picks her up. It seems like a fair bet that Hannah and Gagiel are in similar states, if they’re not as badly off as Joshua with his doubled amount of Grace. If she and Dean are right, and Metatron has attacked _all_ of the angels…

Well. They’re going to need as many people working the phones as they can get, and Cas might be injured and angry but at least he’s still sharp.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says. “You watch over the angels so Missouri and I can both help with the phones. Okay? Try not to move too much.”

It’s not the kind of job he wants, she can tell. His jaw tightens and she’s abruptly reminded of the rage he’d showed when confronted with Gadreel. Given the reactions Cas has gotten for taking another angel’s Grace in a life-or-death situation, she can only imagine what it means that Metatron depowered _all_ of them on a whim.

“Cas,” she says quietly. “Please. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” 

For a moment all that anger is turned on her, leaving her breathless, and then Cas slumps and lets it go. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” She helps him to his feet, using more physical contact than is strictly necessary. He actually seems pretty steady, especially given what just happened, but she thinks they’re both grateful for the comfort of touch.

She lets go of him carefully, hovering to make sure he can stand on his own. “Can you make it down by yourself? I’ll come find you once everyone’s settled.” She’s not entirely sure what to do with Joshua - he’d attacked Cas, but the shallow depth of the cut indicates that he’d been trying to leave Cas as unharmed as possible. “Should we restrain Joshua?” 

“No. I think he was trying to help.”

Mary frowns at him for talking, but she can’t help but ask. “He took your Grace so Metatron couldn’t hurt you with it?” It would explain why Cas seems to be fine and the other angels are completely incapacitated.

“No.” Cas smiles unexpectedly, undaunted by the pain of his throat. “By taking my Grace he made sure there were faint traces left behind. Just like when Gadreel left Sam.”

Mary eyes him. She’s missing something here and she knows it. “Can it hurt you?”

“No. Sam didn’t even know Gadreel's was there.” Cas’s smile takes on a vicious edge. Paired with the bloody handkerchief still pressed to his neck, he makes for a surprisingly intimidating figure. “But Sam was human. _I can still use it.”_

It can’t be very powerful. Certainly not powerful enough to heal others, which had been his biggest concern.

“For the doomsday plan?” she guesses.

“If necessary.” He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “It still may not be.”

“Okay,” Mary says. That's not actually terribly reassuring. “Well. Good. Let's get to work, then and make sure we don't need it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, yeah… I did totally just use Joshua as a deus ex machina.
> 
> GET IT I am so funny. :D


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: **(Minor spoilers for the story)** Minor character death. Loss of a parent/parental figure. Recently un-angeled angels dealing with having emotions. A death that explicitly is not a suicide but might possibly ping readers with suicide-related sensitivities.  
>  SPOILERS: 5x17 ‘99 Problems’, 8x23 ‘Sacrifice’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Abandoned churches in Louisiana  
> NEW TAGS: minor character death  
> NOTES: I put so many feels in this chapter. _So many._ When I wrote chapter 12 I said it contained 40% of the story’s feels. I take that back, ‘cos this one’s got about 75%. As always, if you’re nervous about details you can inbox me [here](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/ask) with spoiler questions and I’ll do my best to answer.

The next several hours pass in a blur of activity. Mary tends to Cas’s wound and settles him in the library with the other angels, who are all in states of either catatonia or despair, and then reports for duty in the atrium. She doesn’t like walking away from a scene of such misery without trying to do anything to ease it, but she reminds herself that the sooner they have an idea of what’s going on and know what they can do to deal with it, the sooner they’ll be able to spare people for other tasks. And Cas does know a lot more about comforting others now than he did when they first met.

The communications operation has expanded since the last time Mary was here, and now includes a number of repurposed blackboards and bulletin boards from around the bunker, all filled with maps and flowcharts and clippings and what looks like a phone tree. The others are already hard at work, calling other hunters and passing over the information they receive to Charlie to collate.

Dean is on the phone and arguing with someone named Krissy, so Mary detours to talk to Charlie first.

“Hey - have you heard from my mom or Dorothy recently? I tried to call them yesterday and got voicemail. I figured their phones just weren’t charged, but...”

Charlie pauses in her frantic typing. “Yeah, I heard from Dorothy… this morning, I think? They’re okay, they were okay then. Are they on your list?”

“I don’t have my list yet,” Mary says hastily. Charlie looks tired and harried, and Mary’s pretty sure her shirt’s on inside-out. “I’m sorry to interrupt, I was just worried.”

Charlie gives her a strained smile. “It’s fine, Mary. I think Dean has the lists… do I have the lists? Where did they go?” she starts digging through papers, muttering to herself.

Mary takes her hand, stopping her. “Don’t worry about it, Charlie, really. I can figure it out. Just focus on what you’ve got to do, okay?”

“Okay.” Charlie takes a deep breath and blows it out. “Okay. Yeah. Oh my God, this is like the most complicated RPG ever, I don’t - no, it’s fine. I’ve got it. Think like a DM, Charlie. Think like a DM.”

“Yes, exactly,” Mary says. She has absolutely no idea what Charlie’s talking about, but it seems to be calming her, so a little reinforcement can’t hurt, right?

Charlie wiggles her shoulders and sits up straighter. “Yep, we’re good. We’re Dumbledore’s Army. We’re… hey, Mary? Look… they asked me to keep this quiet, but this morning Dorothy -”

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Dean says, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. Mary can hear someone talking on the other side, but Dean seems to be ignoring them. “Here, take this. Give what you find out to Charlie.” 

He pushes a sheet of paper in Mary’s direction, which has the numbers and names of the people she needs to call. There are some she knows and some she doesn’t, and there’s no mention of Dorothy or Deanna.

Well, Charlie had said they were fine, and she can catch up with them when this is all sorted out. She gives Charlie an encouraging smile, which is hesitantly returned, and makes her way to a clear spot at the end of the table to make her calls.

She gets a hold of Tamara and Isaac quickly - they’re nearly frantic over Tpau and Omia, who from their perspective suddenly started glowing and screaming for no apparent reason and have been distraught ever since. Mary explains the situation as best she can, and they agree to keep an eye out for any other angels who might be in the area. They had managed to set up a containment spell around the town they’d been assigned to and it appears to be holding, but they hadn’t finished the cleansing spell yet. 

Mary makes a note of this and moves down her list. She talks to Jody, who only had one angel with her but reports the same symptoms and immediately gets off the phone to start barricading the town ‘just in case’, and then to Laura in McClave who is able to tell her that the containment and cleansing spells seem to be holding there just fine. The next three names are people she doesn’t know personally, although she’s heard them mentioned.

“Give me a phone. I will help.”

Mary looks up, startled. Aaoxaif is pale and drawn, and she has Mary’s old shirt wrapped around her like a blanket. It still has bloodstains on it.

“Are you sure?” Mary blurts. She can see Aaoxaif’s hands shaking from here.

Aaoxaif’s chin tips up. It’s quivering slightly. “I am stronger than this.”

“Okay, then,” Mary says seriously. She’s no stranger to the need to _do_ something when confronted with emotional turmoil, and from what she knows of them emotional turmoil is something most angels just aren’t equipped to handle. This is probably one of the healthier coping mechanisms they could learn on the fly. “Here, you can use my phone. I’ve got three people left on my list - just write down what you learn and then give it to Charlie. Sound good?”

Aaoxaif nods and disentangles one hand from Mary’s shirt to take the phone. “This is acceptable.”

Mary glances around the atrium, hesitating for a second. They could probably scare up another phone for her, and more hands on deck would probably be helpful, but she thinks she’d be of more use making sure Cas and his charges are being tended to.

Decision made, she goes down to the kitchen and makes a quick batch of hot chocolate. She’s not really sure how successful she’ll be at providing verbal comfort to previously immortal beings who just had their essences ripped out, but hot drinks are comforting and it’s worth a shot. 

She keeps herself moving as the water boils, putting away dishes and doing a general tidy-up. It’s been a long, adrenalised day preceded by an uncomfortable and mostly sleepless night, and she can feel an exhaustion headache pounding against her temples. Maybe after they’ve successfully reached the field teams and put together some kind of a plan, she’ll be able to grab a nap. Or some industrial-grade caffeine.

The water boils, and she channels her exhaustion into finding a jug for the hot chocolate and figuring out how to carry it and as many mugs as possible without dropping anything. It’s not like sleep deprivation is new for her, after all. She’ll be fine.

When she gets to the library, she finds Joshua still unconscious, laid out in state on one of the library tables, and Rebekah gone. Cas is sitting next to a crying Hannah, patting her scientifically on the shoulder and looking totally at sea.

“There, there,” he says, giving Mary a pleading look.

“Where, _where?”_ Hannah wails. “I don’t understand what you’re _saying_ , Castiel!”

“It’s a phrase, honey,” Mary says, pouring hot chocolate as fast as she can. Hannah looks like she’s working up to a pretty good meltdown and Cas is eyeing the exits with an air of desperation. “It’s drifted from its original meaning and now it’s used as an expression of sympathy or comfort.”

“Oh,” Hannah says. In between sobs she manages one decent breath and then another, and seems to collect herself a little bit. “Then I th-thank you, Castiel.”

Mary holds out the mug. “Would you like some hot chocolate, Hannah?”

Hannah takes it automatically. “I suppose I must do these things now,” she says, giving the cup a bewildered look. “Eating and drinking and, and sleeping - how does one sleep? How do you know when it’s time for one activity or the other if you can’t see the electrochemical signals? Am I upset because I am sad or because my body needs me to drink this?” She looks up at Mary beseechingly. “How do you stand to feel this much all the time? How do you not go mad?”

Mary crouches down and tucks an errant strand of hair back behind Hannah’s ear. “Sometimes it does get pretty overwhelming,” she says gently. “You’ve also had a rough day, and that makes it worse. It won’t always feel this huge.” She hopes. Everyone’s different, after all, and what Hannah’s lost is a devastating thing. “The important thing to know is that it’s okay to feel this much, and it’s okay to be overwhelmed by it. We’re here to help you.” She taps Hannah’s hand with her finger. “Drink your cocoa, sweetie.”

Hannah obediently takes a sip, and Mary turns her attention to Gagiel. He’s curled up in an armchair, hugging his knees to his chest and staring blankly at the floor. Mary wraps his hands around a mug and after a few moments of gentle coaching gets him to drink some, but he doesn’t really react beyond that. After a moment she notices that he’s shivering, so she gets up and fetches a blanket, draping it around his shoulders.

He looks over at her, eyes still a little unfocused. “Is it all right if I stay here? Am I required somewhere?”

Mary smooths the blanket over his shoulder. “You take as much time as you need, okay, sweetheart? You can stay here or you can come out to the atrium. Whatever you want.”

“Thank you.” He hands the mug back and pulls the blanket up over his head, blocking everything out. Mary rubs his shoulder sympathetically and then leaves him to it. Everyone processes things differently.

Cas is watching this interplay with a curious mix of fondness and what almost looks like longing, so she beckons him over to the table and gives him a hug. “How are you feeling, kiddo?”

He sighs into her hair. “My throat is less sore.”

His voice is a little less hoarse, too - almost back at its usual register. She’d given him some painkillers and anti-inflammatories before she’d gone to the atrium, and it’s a relief to see that they’re working. “How are you feeling otherwise?”

He shrugs. “This is far from the first time I’ve lost my Grace. I am better equipped to deal with humanity than the others.” He leans back a little and she lets him go. “For them, this is unknown and terrifying. They have never experienced humanity firsthand and many of them had never even left Heaven before being cast out - all they know is what they’ve been told, and that has been distorted by so many layers of politics and propaganda as to be useless.” He gives her a wry, self-deprecating smile. “In this, at least, I am ahead of the curve.”

“Were you scared when you first came here?” Mary asks, curious.

“No,” Cas says immediately. “Humanity has always fascinated me. I used to think of you as works of art, before I had any real understanding. To walk amongst you was an adventure and an honor. It still is, even with everything else that has happened.”

He’s so sincere, so earnest, that Mary can’t actually think of what to say, so she kisses him on the forehead instead. “Have some cocoa?”

“I don’t think I’ve tried that yet,” he says, eyeing it speculatively.

Mary’s just pouring him a cup when Missouri sticks her head into the library. “Mary, are you - ah, there you are. Could you come back to the atrium, please? You too, Cas.”

Mary gathers up the cocoa supplies - she has just enough left for Rebekah and Aaoxaif, if they want it - and pauses to let Hannah know where they’re going before she leaves. To her surprise, as they enter the library she hears a quiet sound behind her and turns to see that Hannah is following them instead of staying put.

Dean looks up as they approach. “Okay, guys. We’ve got a preliminary idea of what’s going on out there, so we need to make a game plan. Charlie, update?”

Mary sidles around the edge of the crowd and hands Aaoxaif and Rebekah mugs of cocoa. Rebekah looks steady and calm, for all that she has to reach up occasionally to wipe away tears, and she takes the cup from Mary with a shaky smile. Aaoxaif glares at hers and then knocks it back like a shot.

“All right,” Charlie says, fiddling with her tablet. “So, upshot: we’ve been able to get in touch with about 85% of the Free Will Army teams with angel members, and they all report the same sequence of events we saw here. Tracy Bell was near an unaffiliated angel who was affected too, so it seems probable that whatever Metatron did isn’t directed at us specifically, but we asked Annie Hawkins and Mackey to see if they can check on Bartholomew and Malachi’s headquarters to be sure. Of course, that also means that there were probably a decent number of angels who lit up like that in front of civilians, which I don’t think is going to help the general panic any.” She frowns at her tablet, and then shakes it off. “The good news is that all the containment and cleansing spells we managed to put in place before the power-down seem to be holding.”

“How do the other angels fare?” Hannah asks. “Have any reacted like Joshua?”

“I have spoken to several of our siblings,” Rebekah cuts in. “They are grieving and frightened, but conscious. Charlie, have you heard any differently?”

Charlie frowns at her tablet. “No, that jives with what I’ve got. I’m guessing it’s down to the extra Grace he had, but it’s anybody’s guess at this point unless you know anything.”

Rebekah shakes her head. “This is beyond my knowledge. I cannot even say how Metatron did it. And without my Grace -” she falters for a moment, and then collects herself. “I cannot help Joshua, or even say what is amiss.”

“If he doesn’t come to soon we should probably take him to the hospital,” Mary says. It’s not a suggestion she’s wild about, both because who knows what complications a comatose, magically depowered angel might come with and because at the hospital Joshua will be completely vulnerable, but she doesn’t see how they have much choice in the matter. “They’re better equipped to care for a coma patient than we are.”

Rebekah nods reluctantly.

“If you don’t know how the power-down was done, is it possible this wasn’t Metatron?” Dean asks. He doesn’t look happy about this, and Mary can guess why - Metatron has just revealed himself to be powerful enough and capricious enough to cause a good deal of havoc with no warning, which isn’t good, but if it’s some new enemy showing their hand then they’ll have a whole new set of problems to deal with.

“It was Metatron,” Rebekah says immediately. “There was… I suppose you could call it a _flavor_ that was distinctly the Scribe. Bitterness, vindictiveness, and glee, and he felt that what he did was _justified_. It couldn’t be anyone else. We all felt the same thing when he cast us out.” She shudders, and Mary grips her shoulder sympathetically.

“Okay,” Dean says. “The next question, I guess, is what does this mean for all of us? Assuming Bart and Malachi are out of the running too, that leaves humans and demons and the virus. Abaddon’s been spending most of her attention on the angel camps, so what’s she going to do now that they’re down? Keep going and kill us all, or just take the win?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Mary sees Missouri looks sharply at Charlie, who gives her an agonized look in return. After a second of eye contact, Missouri sighs and makes a _fine, go on_ gesture with her hand.

“I think we should focus on the Croatoan spells,” Charlie says, wrenching her gaze away from Missouri. No one else seems to have noticed their little exchange and they’re both blank-faced again, so Mary files it away for future consideration and doesn’t say anything. “We can’t really predict what Abaddon’s going to do, but we already have a plan for the virus. I say we focus on altering the spells so they’ll work without Grace.”

“Fine, the research team can get back to it, but that doesn’t solve all of our problems,” Dean says impatiently. “Does anyone have any ideas for Abaddon?”

“Can we get Bela on the phone?” Mary asks. “She’s supposed to be in Abaddon’s camp spying, right?”

“Crowley’s the only one with her number,” Linda says disgustedly. “We’re supposed to believe he’ll let us know what she finds out.”

Mary raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t trust Crowley either, but that was particularly vehement.

“And that’s assuming she hasn’t jumped ship for Abaddon anyway,” Sam says, shrugging apologetically when they turn to look at him. “Look, even when she was human she always watched out for herself first, and we know Crowley’s losing the demon fight. Sentimentality’s really the _only_ reason someone would choose our side at this point.”

“Great,” Dean says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “So basically it’s us versus Abaddon, and most of the angels aren’t in a state to fight right now.”

There’s a depressed pause. The Free Will Army was small to begin with and pitting themselves against the Croatoan virus and the potentially combined might of Hell on Earth is a daunting proposition. The possibility that Abaddon will just declare victory and go back to Hell to gloat is tempting, but highly unlikely. Given her lack of subtlety so far, Mary’s betting she’ll just up her plans, let her demons off their leashes, and then sit back to enjoy the carnage.

“We could poll the angels again,” Charlie suggests. “See if any more of them would have anything that could help with de-Gracing the spells. I mean, we don’t know what Abaddon’s going to do, but the virus is a concrete problem, and it might help the angels to have something to do. It makes sense to concentrate on that instead of the demons.”

Dean gives her an exasperated look. “I understand what you’re saying, Charlie, but this is not exactly an either-or situation.”

“Knowledge is power?” Charlie tries, wilting slightly. 

Dean rolls his eyes, but Cas tilts his head to the side in consideration. “People are starting to put things together now anyway. It might be time to arm the civilians, with information if nothing else. At a minimum it might allow them to protect themselves, and it could possibly even increase our ranks as well.”

Mary gives him a startled look. _Protect the secret_ has been drilled into her since she was old enough to understand what the supernatural even was, and it’s instinctive to refuse the suggestion out of hand. 

Cas is a good strategist, though, even if his grasp of the human mindset isn’t always as solid. It might be a workable idea. It’s certainly not one a hunter would ever come up with, which lends it an element of surprise.

“You mean like mail out a _Fighting Demons 101_ guide?” Sam says skeptically. “I get what you’re saying, but most people have trouble believing in demons when they’ve just been _possessed_. They’re not going to think it’s real.”

“Well, they might,” Linda says speculatively. “Ask Charlie.”

Dean raises his eyebrows at Charlie, who looks shifty.

“What did you do,” Dean sighs.

“Nothing bad!” Charlie says defensively. “I just, as I look for battle info sometimes I come across regular hunts too. A lot of the time, actually, and since we can’t spare anyone to take care of it and the rates have kind of been kicking up since all this stuff started happening - look, it’s not fair not to help.”

Missouri, psychically several beats ahead of everyone but Charlie and Linda, blinks in surprise and then looks over at Sam and Dean, letting out a startled bark of laughter. 

“So,” Charlie says, looking nervous, “so, I’ve been mailing people copies of the _Supernatural_ books.”

“ _What?”_ Dean says.

“Oh, no,” Sam moans, looking betrayed.

“Supernatural books?” Mary asks, bewildered. 

“Written by Chuck, the prophet before Kevin,” Cas says, mouth twitching slightly. “True accounts of Sam and Dean’s adventures since John Winchester went missing and Sam left Stanford with Dean to go looking for him. They were very accurate. Very… detailed.”

Sam makes a noise that sounds like _augh_.

“They were supposed to one day be known as the Winchester Gospels and take their place amongst other holy literature, but we derailed that destiny,” Cas continues. The other angels suddenly look enlightened.

“There would be a wealth of information in those pages,” Rebekah says approvingly. Hannah glances at Dean and blushes furiously, which gives Mary a good idea of what some of those details might have involved.

“They were terrible books,” Dean huffs. “They were, they were _hack literature_. People wrote _stories_ about them, it was…” he visibly collects himself. “Anyway. What’s done is done. Charlie, people didn’t seem to be paying attention to them, did they?” he asks in an undertone.

“Well, not everybody,” Charlie admits. “At least not right away. But I did see several accounts of people successfully using the information. And I’ve found a couple of tattoo sites advertising new anti-possession tattoo designs, so, I’d say it wasn’t a disaster. The fan sites have. Um. Gotten more popular, too.”

Dean sighs. “I don’t like it. And I don’t like the idea of spreading around demon information.”

“I think Dean’s right,” Sam says. “The possibility of creating an even bigger panic - we might cause just as much trouble as we’re trying to prevent. It’s all well and good to give out an exorcism and a few tips about holy water, but assuming they even believe it most people just aren’t equipped to take this stuff in. Remember what happened with the false prophet? They all had the right information, or near enough, and all it took was one unscrupulous person to turn it into a religious bloodbath. This kind of situation doesn’t exactly always bring out the best in people.”

Dean and Cas both grimace. “That’s not entirely accurate,” Cas protests, but it sounds half-hearted.

“Oh, honestly,” Linda snaps, tossing down her headset down in disgust. “Listen to yourselves! The crux of the matter is whether or not you want to warn innocent people and maybe save a few lives, or leave them in ignorance and let them die scared. _That’s_ the choice. What they do with the information is up to them, not you, and frankly I’m ashamed that it’s even a question. This isn’t like the Leviathan, they’re not hiding behind - behind corporations and laws and decency. They’re marching on humanity and trying to kill everything in their path.”

“Fine,” Dean says finally, looking a little abashed but trying to cover it. “Okay. Send it out.”

To Mary’s surprise, Charlie looks torn rather than victorious. “If you want me to, of course, and ordinarily I’m all for freedom of information, but you should maybe know -”

“Hang on,” Sam says, holding up a hand to silence Charlie. “Something just occurred to me. The cleansed towns - those spells stay up unless they’re disabled, right?”

“That’s correct,” Aaoxaif says, frowning.

“And the uninfected can pass through the barrier without being stopped,” Sam continues.

“Of course,” Cas says, comprehension dawning. “The barriers will keep the virus out just as well as they once kept it in. If we add demon warding symbols, we’ll be able to create several safe havens. That could be very useful.”

“Oh, good job, Sammy,” Mary says without thinking. Sam looks torn between objecting to the nickname and being pleased by the praise. 

“She’s right, Sammy,” Dean says, mouth twitching suspiciously. Sam glares at him. “If nothing else we need a place for the noncombatants to stay. Charlie, how many towns have we got with both the barrier and the cleansing spell? How far are they from our teams?”

“Let me look,” Charlie says. “Uh… McClave, Blue Earth, Camp Chitaqua -”

“What?” Dean says, going pale. “Camp Chitaqua? You’re sure, you’re absolutely positive?”

“Um, yes?” Charlie says, looking surprised. “It’s actually a pretty good site for a base, they’ve still got the chain-link fence up -” comprehension dawns on her at the same time as Mary remembers with a shock why the name is so familiar. “Ohhhh, that’s the place you went to when you went into the future -”

“It wasn’t a real future,” Dean snaps, but it’s easy to see that he’s badly shaken. “And even if it was it’s not the one we’re in now.”

“Still, it’s even more reason to sort out the spell problem before we try to tackle the demons,” Charlie says brightly.

“Oh, for -” Dean says, irritated, “Charlie, we’ll look into the spells, okay? Why are you so keen to ignore the demons?”

“Well,” Charlie stammers, caught, “it’s not exactly _ignoring_ , really, I just think, I think maybe our efforts are better…” she wilts. “Okay, look. You should maybe know what your grandmother is up to.”

“Wait, grandmother?” Mary says, feeling fear prickle up her spine. “My mom? Why, what’s my mom doing?”

“Mary,” Charlie says, shifting uncomfortably, “you have to understand - they asked me to keep it quiet, I would have told you if it had been up to me, I swear I would have.”

“ _Charlie Bradbury,”_ Mary says sternly. Charlie shrinks into herself.

“Okay,” she says to her tablet. “Okay, fine. So, so the demons might not, might not actually continue to be a problem _per se_ and we should probably focus on the virus and not worry about it so much.”

“What does that even mean?” Mary demands, but Sam is straightening in something like alarm.

“Charlie,” he says, fixing her with a look, “Deanna’s not doing the Hell trials, is she?”

“With Dorothy and Kevin and Rufus, yeah,” Charlie says, wincing.

“Wait, the Hell trials that nearly killed Sam?” Mary says, alarmed. “Those Hell trials? My _mother?”_ She’d seen her mother talking to Kevin and Rufus before they all left, sure, but they’d left in different teams and she’s spoken to her mom since then, while she had her -

Cold. _Dammit._

Sam holds up a placating hand. “Look, she can’t be that far along with them. The first one’s killing a hellhound, which these days probably isn’t too hard to find, but for the second you have to rescue an innocent soul from Hell and that’s going to be nearly impossible. Even if she’s done the first one there should still be time -”

“You got something else to add, Charlie?” Dean asks, staring Charlie down. She’s squirming under the attention.

“Well, it’s... ordinarily, ordinarily you’d be right, even with all the spirits floating around these days the second trial would still be really hard, but, um...” she looks at the ceiling, as if searching for a way out, and then says all in a rush to the far corner, “if you’re working with the King of Hell it turns out it’s a lot easier.”

Everyone starts talking at once, but Mary just stands there, paralysed. She wants to be able to discount Charlie’s story out of hand, wants to be able to roll her eyes and scoff at the idea that her mother would do something so foolish, but she can’t. Her mind is locked in a litany of _no not Mom, Mom what have you done_ and _please don’t leave me_ , because of course Deanna would. Of course she would take this chance. She wouldn’t see that she’s leaving Mary, leaving the boys, she would only see that closing Hell would be a help -

Aaoxaif bumps Mary’s arm as she turns to talk to Cas, and air rushes back into Mary’s lungs. She forces herself to stop. _Think_. Shut everything off.

Survival first. Solve the problem in front of you.

Take a breath.

The first two trials sound like they’re done, which leaves the final one. That one, if memory serves, is to cure a demon. Given what Bela told Mary in the kitchen all those long days ago, and the fact that he’s already involved, the demon they’re curing is probably Crowley himself. Sam’s attempt at the trials left Crowley trapped between demon and human, and if he doesn’t want to demon up again then his only option is to go fully human and slam Hell’s doors shut in the process. Using a group of hunters to do his dirty work by appealing to their desire to protect others is exactly the kind of ploy he’d use.

Okay. So. What she needs now is more specific information.

Between Linda demanding to know if her son’s all right, Sam making his feelings on Crowley’s trustworthiness clear, Dean asking what else Charlie might be keeping from them, and the angels mostly trying to figure out what the hell everyone’s talking about, there’s too much noise in the atrium for her to make herself heard so she pulls her gun out of her waistband and fires it carefully into the wooden baseboard of the nearest wall.

“Charlie, how far along are they?” she asks when everyone falls silent and turns to stare at her.

Charlie’s mouth works soundlessly for a moment and then she stammers “They - they should have started the final trial this morning.”

“Where?” 

Charlie darts a _help me_ look at Dean, but he’s too focused on Mary to notice, his hands still half-raised in an automatic defensive gesture following the gunshot. “Louisiana?”

Damn. That’s probably a fifteen-hour drive, depending on where they are in the state. “How much time do I have?”

Charlie’s expression crumples. “It’s, it takes about eight hours to do the whole trial, and they started this morning so they should be doing the final stage soon, I think. Mary, I’m so sorry -”

_Solve the problem._ That’s not enough time to make the drive. An angel could fly that fast, but Metatron - and maybe Gadreel - are the only ones left. Theoretically a demon could teleport, maybe even with a passenger, but their only demonic allies are Crowley’s people and he’s not going to help them to ruin his own plans. She might be able to talk Bela around, but she has no way to get in touch with her. There’s Cain, maybe, and he might even still be close by, but she doesn’t know what it will take to convince him and she doesn’t have time for an argument. She doesn’t know of any other way to travel - 

Wait. Yes she does.

“Call Dorothy,” Mary says, absently tucking her gun away. She doesn’t know what supplies she’ll need for this, so a standard kit is probably her best bet. Good thing she hasn’t unpacked yet. “Have her swing through Oz and pick me up.”

“Can she do that?” Dean asks, startled.

“Maybe?” Charlie hazards. “The Oz key isn’t exactly a precision instrument. Last time we tried to come through the bunker’s front door and ended up in Mary’s closet.”

It’s still closer than Louisiana. “Call her. Cas, I need a word.”

She heads for the library before remembering that it’s occupied, and has to detour for the kitchen instead. Cas follows her warily, coming to a halt when she turns to look at him.

“Would your doomsday plan help me save my mom?” She’s formed some theories on what the plan entails, even though she’s tried not to think about it and been careful not to press him for details. If he’s planning what she thinks he’s planning, it might be her only chance. She vividly remembers how far Dean had had to go to save Sam when he had reached this stage.

He doesn’t look surprised by the question, but he hesitates before answering. “Perhaps. But it would be… unwise.”

“I don’t care about wise, Cas, she’s my mother!” 

She shuts off the rest of the words before they can come out: _I didn’t have enough time, I don’t want to lose anyone else, this isn’t_ fair.

_No._ Focus on the problem. 

“Which is a very Winchester sentiment,” Cas says gently, “and certainly one I have indulged in the past, but this would be the equivalent of - of setting off an atomic bomb to open a locked door. I am sorry for your mother, Mary, but I refuse to risk _you_ unless all of our options are exhausted.” 

She can feel her composure cracking and bears down hard to keep herself in control. “Is there another way to - can I help her? Fix her, keep her from dying? If I convince her not to finish, or if I take her place for the last -” 

Cas is already shaking his head. “The trials put the body through an extreme amount of stress,” he says, his voice soft and sympathetic. “When Sam made it this far it was only angelic intervention that saved him. It’s possible that a good intensive care facility would be able to keep her alive, but only for so long.” He takes a hesitant step closer. “Mary, she could save us all if she continues.” 

Mary steps back. “Why didn’t she -” _tell me. Want me with her. Find someone else to do it._ She bites down hard on the end of the sentence and out of the corner of her eye she sees Cas reach out for her. 

She takes another step back. Cas lets his hand fall, looking worried. 

“Okay,” she says, forcing everything back down again. This is not a good time to fall apart. “Okay.” She spots a touch of movement in the hall and raises her voice. “Charlie, did you get in touch with Dorothy?” 

Charlie steps tentatively into the room. “Yes. She said she’d try. If it works she should arrive in a few minutes. Somewhere.” She fidgets, and then takes another step into the room. “Mary. I didn’t want to - I didn’t mean to - I, I know she’s your mom. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.” Her voice wobbles, and Mary remembers that her own mother had died when she was young. 

“Don’t cry, Charlie,” Mary says. It comes out more sharply than she’d intended and Charlie flinches, biting her lip. Mary takes a deep breath. “Charlie, sweetheart, I’m not angry with you. I know my mother pretty well and I don’t think this was your decision. Please, just don’t cry right now. I don’t have time to join you.” 

Charlie nods, looking miserable. “I’ll go back upstairs and wait for Dorothy.” She turns and darts back up the stairs, narrowly avoiding getting sideswiped by Sam’s duffel bag. 

Dean steps down into the kitchen and tosses Mary a jacket. “It’s going to be warm down there, but it’s better to have long sleeves than not if there’s a fight,” he says evenly. “I’ve got holy water, salt, iron, devil’s shoestring - do you think we’ll need anything else?” 

“You plan to go with her?” Cas asks. 

“Yep.” Dean says. “You’ve got to hold down the fort while we’re gone, okay?” 

Cas frowns. “I’ll come too.” 

“No, you have to stay here, Cas,” Sam says. “We need to leave somebody in charge who knows what they’re doing. You’re the most responsible one.” 

“Charlie, Mrs. Tran, and Rebekah are all highly capable and more well-informed about the current state of affairs than I am,” Cas says acerbically, unmoved by this argument. “But since I understand that you were trying to be nice about telling me to stay behind and ‘guard the car’, I won’t tell them you said that.” He pushes past them and stomps off up the stairs. 

“He’s getting better at the nuance thing,” Sam mutters, wincing. 

“Just wait until he finds out Mrs. Tran is coming with us too,” Dean says, sighing. He raises his voice. “Cas, for crying out loud - stop for a second.” 

Cas halts halfway up the stairs, his back still to them. 

“Four _hours_ ago we watched you get your throat slit right in front of us,” Dean says irritably. “We just want like half a day before we have to worry about it again, okay? Stop being childish.” 

Cas huffs and keeps walking. Dean rolls his eyes. “Mom, you got anything else you want to grab?” 

She can’t worry about Cas right now. She barely has enough room in her head to be grateful that Dean and Sam aren’t trying to talk her out of this. “No. Let’s go.” 

By the time they get upstairs, Dorothy has arrived and made her way to the atrium. Cas is lurking by the map table, still looking put out, but he unbends long enough to hand her his angel blade. 

“I already have one,” Mary says, confused. 

“Well, now you have two,” Cas says, a little sharply, and it strikes Mary that this is probably the only thing he can think of to do since his offers of comfort and help were both rejected. 

She’ll probably feel bad about that later, but for now she just nods and sticks the angel blade through the other side of her belt. It’s a little awkward to fit two of them, but she’ll manage. 

“Landed in the bathroom,” Dorothy is saying to the boys as Mary turns towards them. “A little awkward, but it could have been worse. You ready for this?” 

Mary isn’t ready. Mary isn’t ready at all. 

“Yeah. Lead the way.” 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary doesn’t look around as they go through Oz. She’s too distracted and, quite frankly, she just doesn’t care. She has a vague impression of a room with vaulted ceilings, and about a million pieces of bric-a-brac that are all a violent shade of green, but the most important thing for her is the door they’ve just come through.

Dorothy closes it, waits for the light around the jamb to die, then sticks the key in and concentrates for a moment.

“In general, it’s easier to get into Oz than it is to get out of it,” she says apologetically when the first attempt at opening the door reveals what Mary’s pretty sure is a museum gift shop. “It’s kind of like a dimensional lobster trap.”

“Take your time,” Linda says in a tone that implies the exact opposite.

“Hey, Mom?” Dean says as they watch Dorothy try again. Mary’s channeling her impatience into standing as still as possible, which is getting more difficult by the minute. By her count it’s been fifteen minutes since Charlie fessed up, and she’s not sure how much time that will give her before Deanna will want to do the final step in the trial. “Mom?”

“Sorry, what?” Mary says distractedly.

“I just wanted to warn you,” Dean says carefully. “Deanna’s doing this a lot faster than Sam did, so it might be different, but by the time we got this far Sam looked pretty bad. You might want to be ready for it.”

‘Pretty bad’ covers a lot of territory, but before Mary can decide if she wants a better description than that Dorothy hits paydirt.

“Wrong direction, but it’s close enough,” she says, leading them out of Oz and onto a scrubby bit of land bordered by overgrown trees and bushes. Mary turns around as they come out and finds a dilapidated, clearly long-abandoned church behind them. “Let me just close the door… okay, we’re good.”

She reopens the door and ushers them into the church proper. Linda immediately peels off to check on Kevin, but Mary’s focus is entirely on a figure in the other direction wrapped in a blanket and seated on one of the only remaining intact pews.

“Hi, Mary,” Deanna says, smiling tentatively. She looks gaunt and ill - there are dark shadows under her eyes and even as Mary pushes past Sam to hurry over to her Deanna holds a handkerchief to her face and coughs. It’s a horrible sound - painful and rattling - and as soon as Mary hears it she pulls up short.

“I know, I look great,” Deanna says dryly, her old wry smile on her face. “Come and sit down, honey?”

Mary takes a step, and then another, and somehow makes it to the bench. All of her focus had been tied up into getting here in time, and now that she’s here she doesn’t know what to do. Even with what Cas had said, and what she’d known to expect, she’d still thought that once she got here there would be a clear course of action - something she could change or stop that would save Deanna.

Now, sitting on this bench and looking into her mother’s haggard, exhausted face, she’s at a loss. There’s _blood_ on Deanna’s handkerchief. 

“Go ahead, let me have it,” Deanna says.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mary asks. It tumbles out without her permission. She should be using this time to strategise, to plead, to come up with some way around this. She shouldn’t be wasting time on trivialities.

Deanna’s expression falls. “I was going to,” she says heavily. “I was going to ask you to come help me with the last trial, but then I got sick, and I… I didn’t want you to have to watch me go through this. It’s not - it’s not something I wanted you to have in your head. I wanted you to be able to imagine me just… swinging shut a massive pair of doors, or fighting off a bunch of demons and laughing the whole way, or doing some big magical lightshow, and instead you have to see me like - I’m sorry. It sounds pretty shallow when I put it like that.” She reaches up to rub her forehead. Her hand is shaking. “I wasn’t going to just - I would have called. I just didn’t want you to have to see, and I knew that if I’d told you the plan from the beginning you’d try to talk me out of it or - God forbid - do the trials yourself.”

“Okay, fine,” Mary says impatiently, “but there has to be something else. This, this trials thing, it’s stupid. It’s _senseless_. There’s got to be - some trick or loophole or way around it.”

“And maybe with another ten years to work on it we might figure one out,” Deanna says. She seems awfully calm, given the stakes, and Mary wants to shake her. “We’re operating on a tighter timeline than that, though.”

“No!” Mary says. “No, that’s ridiculous. Mom, Hell’s always been open, we could have survived this. We didn’t need to - this isn’t _necessary_ -”

“Do you know what my last thought was when I died?” Deanna says sharply. Mary winces. She’s spent most of her adult life trying not to think about this. “I knew there was a demon in your father. I couldn’t get to him and I couldn’t warn you. My last thought was ‘Please, God, don’t let him find Mary.’” She reaches over and puts her hand over Mary’s. “If I can keep that from happening to you, or your boys when they have kids, or to anyone else, then it’s worth it.”

Mary swallows down nausea. The demon _had_ found her. The demon had found her and killed her father and stolen her children, although Mary hadn’t realised it until years later. He’d set John on the path to raising her boys as hunters and they had spent their lives surrounded by violence and fear.

“Mary,” Deanna says, her firm tone contrasting with the comforting way she strokes Mary’s hair, “you’d do the same thing in my place. Don’t pretend that the circumstances are any different just because you’re on the other end of it.”

Mary sucks in a breath, gut-punched. “Mom,” she whispers, “Mom, it’s not fair. You don’t understand, you didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t deserve this but I -”

Deanna puts her hand over Mary’s mouth, silencing her. “Mary Elizabeth Campbell, that is enough of that. There is no ‘deserve’, there’s no ‘fair’, and if you start blaming yourself for this, I will come back from the dead - _again_ \- and slap you silly, child. This is my choice, and I’m making it because I believe you and your boys and everyone else can survive if I succeed. You want a ‘deserve’? There it is - you deserve to survive. And I deserve to make my choice and have that choice be respected. Do you understand me?”

Mary’s tears spill over and she nods, unable to speak. Her mother leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “I love you, sweetheart,” she says. 

“I missed you so much,” Mary chokes.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” She strokes Mary’s hair. “We’ve only got a few minutes, so I want you to promise me something.”

“Of course,” Mary says, scrubbing her face with her sleeves. “Anything. You know that.”

“Don’t watch this. Okay?”

“ _Mom,”_ Mary says, anguished.

“No,” Deanna says firmly. “I know you’re here for me but I don’t want you to see this. You don’t have to go back to the bunker, just - don’t watch. Please? Turn your back or go outside. Don’t let Dean or Sam watch either.”

“Okay,” Mary whispers. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too,” Deanna says, kissing the top of her head. “I always will. Now go get your boys.”

Mary stands up shakily and turns away. Behind her, she hears Rufus help her mother get to her feet and then keep her upright while she coughs again. 

Mary holds her head high and doesn’t falter as she walks. Dean and Sam glance up as she approaches. They’re standing with the others at the end of the room and they look wary and on edge. Dorothy, standing close to them, looks tired and upset, but steadfast. She’s abandoned some of her more old-fashioned clothing and has jeans and a plain t-shirt on under her bomber jacket, and she gives Mary a nod when she sees her coming. Kevin and Linda are next to her, Linda pointedly standing between her son and Crowley, who is slumped in a rickety chair next to a table with a row of supplies. He looks woozy and shaken, and Mary thinks she may even see tear tracks on his face, but she doesn’t care to look at him for long. In the far corner she can just make out someone tied up in a devil’s trap, which is good thinking. They’ll want to be sure the spell worked.

“Dean, Sam,” she says, surprised by how steady her voice is. “Come with me, please.”

They glance at at each other, worried, but follow without hesitation. She leads them over to the door and opens it, stepping out onto the bare earth just beyond. The door swings wide and stays open behind them.

“She doesn’t want us to watch,” Mary says to the empty space in front of her.

“But -” Sam says, and falls silent as Dean comes and stands with his shoulder against hers, looking out over the abandoned yard.

“It’s what she wants,” Mary repeats.

“...Okay,” Sam says, subdued, falling into place on her other side. 

The temptation to look back is nearly overwhelming. Mary shuts her eyes and clenches her fists, and after a moment she feels Dean put his arm around her shoulders.

They can still hear what’s happening inside, more or less. There’s a rough “Do it,” from Crowley, and then a gasp of pain. 

“That’s probably the final injection,” Sam says quietly. 

Behind them, Deanna begins to chant an exorcism. She sounds like she’s in pain. “After the exorcism she’ll cut her hand,” Sam continues, “and put it over his mouth. There will be a flare of light, and… I don’t really know what happens after that.”

“Thank you, Sam,” Mary says, opening her eyes again. She knows that this is his way of trying to help, just like Dean’s is to stand as close to her as possible, and she’s glad for both of them. She wouldn’t be able to stand here by herself and keep looking in the wrong direction. She wouldn’t be able to keep herself from going back inside.

There’s a bright flash of light behind them coupled with the sound of Crowley crying out, muffled by Deanna’s hand.

And then there’s a moment of silence.

“Is that it?” Dean asks, and then there’s a much brighter flare of light, angry red and so bright that it has an almost physical presence, and Deanna screams in agony. 

All of Mary’s good intention go straight out of the window as soon as she hears the scream. Dean’s arm is already tightening against her back, automatically trying to hold her back, but she twists and brings her elbow up and _turns_ -

The world around her wrenches and shifts, lurching under her feet. It’s not a physical sensation or even one she really registers with her senses. It’s like having an attack of vertigo while sitting completely still - everything just disconnects and _changes_ , fundamentally and in a way she doesn’t understand.

When she’s able to focus her eyes again, she finds herself half-collapsed on the ground and tangled up with Dean, Sam a few inches away looking stunned.

“Sam, are you okay?” Mary asks. “Dean?”

“Fine,” Dean grunts, struggling to his knees. “Was that it? Did it work?”

“I - I think so?” Sam says “I don’t - did you _feel_ that? It wasn’t just me?”

Mary can hear movement in the church, and for a moment she can’t turn her head. She knows, she _knows_ what she’ll see if she looks, but if she never does maybe Deanna will still be there with that wry smile…

She turns. Deanna isn’t there. Rufus is kneeling next to a body and the others are slowly picking themselves up off the ground. Crowley’s slumped in the chair, motionless, but behind him Dorothy’s saying “It worked. Oh my God, it worked,” and Kevin and Linda are hugging each other, half laughing and half crying in victory.

Mary stares, frozen. Deanna’s gone. Her mother is _gone._

“Mom?”

Deanna will never hug Mary again. She’ll never tease her. She’ll never go on another road trip again, never clean the kitchen, never drink tea at the kitchen table and tell stories while she sharpens her knives. She won’t be there if Mary needs help, or if she just wants to talk. 

Mary had wasted so much time. Her mother had been _right there_.

“Aw, Mom…” Dean pulls her into a hug, murmuring “No, shh, it’s okay,” when she tries to pull back. She doesn’t want to cry on him. She doesn’t want him to have to deal with this. She knows how weird and scary it can be to see your parents cry, and she already feels bad about how much she’d put on him when he was a child. At least Sam had been too young to know what was going on then, and now he’s going to have to watch _this_ -

Sam’s big hand settles on her back, warm and comforting. She buries her face in Dean’s shoulder and takes several steadying breaths, and then leans back, wiping her face with the backs of her hands.

“Hunter’s funeral,” she says, her voice wobbling. “We need wood.” 

“Okay,” Sam says, shifting his hand up to rest on her shoulder. “Dean and I can do that. Why don’t you sit for a minute?”

Mary shakes her head. “No. I’ll help.”

“Here.” A handkerchief appears in her field of vision, held out by Dorothy. She’s red-eyed but reasonably composed, and Mary takes the handkerchief with a nod of thanks. “There’s a collapsed outbuilding on the other side of the church. We can use the lumber.”

“Did Hell really close?” Dean asks in an undertone.

Dorothy raises her eyebrows. “You felt the shift, didn’t you?”

“What happened to the demon?” Sam asks.

Dorothy makes a sour face. “Good news and bad news. The door to Hell is shut, but it looks like that doesn’t come with a side effect of sucking the demons already up here back down as it closes. The demon’s depowered and pretty messed up, but it’s still topside. Kevin’s checking to see if exorcisms still work.”

There’s a scream of rage and the familiar sound of a demon being sent back to Hell from inside the church.

“Still works,” Dorothy says with vicious satisfaction. “And now it’s a one-way trip.”

“Not what we’d hoped,” Sam murmurs, giving Mary a concerned look.

“It’s better than what we had,” Dean says sharply. “If the angels are any indication, the demons’ll be disoriented and off-balance. We’ve got the edge now. We can set up frigging speakers and broadcast exorcisms over Times Square if we want to.”

“Dean’s right,” Mary says hoarsely. “She wanted to give us a chance at survival. Now we’ve got it.” She hands the handkerchief back to Dorothy and squares her shoulders. “It’s not a question of this being worth it or fair. We respect what she did and be grateful for it.” Dammit, she’s going to cry again. “We need to get wood.”

Dean helps her to her feet. Mary takes half a moment to consider her options, and then she chooses to walks around the outside of the building rather than go through it. Deanna’s - the body is still in there.

Sam and Dean hover close to her as they find the outbuilding and begin to build the pyre. They seem to be more concerned with staying close than with helping, and once or twice she’s pretty sure they accidentally run into each other, but she doesn’t have the energy to deal with it so she pretends not to notice.

One by one, the others come out of the church and silently begin to help. Even Crowley comes, stumbling a little and looking lost. He’s not very effective, but he does seem to be trying.

The pyre is built faster than Mary would have liked, and then Rufus and Sam disappear into the church and return with the body, carefully wrapped in a blanket. Dean finishes pouring accelerant on the wood and makes a lighter fluid trail back to the bare area by the church building.

They gather behind him as he leans down and touches his lighter to the end of the trail. The flame runs along the ground, hits the pyre, and everything goes up in a _whoosh._

“We’ll do this old style, I think,” Rufus says, and pulls a bottle of Johnnie Walker out of his coat pocket. “To Deanna Moore Campbell,” he says, raising it high. “A classy lady and hell on wheels with a knife.” He takes a drink and passes the bottle to Linda.

This is far from the first hunter funeral Mary’s ever been to. Given time and resources, in addition to the traditional pyre and the hard alcohol toasts a lot of the ones she’d been to had included a potluck of some kind. Granted, occasionally the food was cobbled together from emergency supplies or gas station candy counters, but it had been the thought that counted.

She wonders what hunter funerals are like now, if Rufus considers this to be ‘old style’. There are so few hunters left, even with the resurrected ones back in the mix.

Linda takes the bottle. “To Deanna,” she says. “You never did give me your derby pie recipe, so I guess we’ll just have to find a way to contact you.” 

Kevin gives a quiet huff of laughter and takes the bottle next. He’s quiet for a moment, and then says “I’m glad that I got the chance to travel with you,” and takes a drink.

Dorothy pauses to take a sip before saying anything, and rolls the bottle between her hands as she thinks. “To Deanna,” she says finally. “I’m glad you found a place for yourself.”

Crowley intercepts the bottle between Dorothy and Dean and knocks back a healthy swig. “I can’t believe I turned human just in time for a sodding funeral,” he says roughly, and raises the bottle. “Deanna, ducky, you scared the Hell out of me.” 

Sam groans, but it startles a laugh out of Mary. Crowley grins and takes another shot before passing the bottle over to Dean.

Dean stares at it for a long moment, and then raises it and says “Thank you for the name. I’ll try to do it proud.”

Sam glances at Mary and then reaches across her to take the bottle first. He holds it for a long moment, at a loss, and then finally raises it high. “To Deanna,” he says. “I never got to know you as well as I would have liked, but I tried once to do what you just finished, and I didn’t make it. So... thanks, Deanna, for saving us and for showing us how it’s done.”

He drinks, and gives Mary a questioning look. She nods and holds her hand out for the bottle. It’s a little over halfway full now, and a comforting weight in her hand. 

The first time Deanna had died Mary had had to do the pyre by herself for both of her parents at once. They’d been well-liked and well-known and she could have put out a call to other hunters for help, but she’d been terrified that someone would figure out what she’d done to save John. So she’d done it alone, in secret, and afterwards she’d cried for an hour in the car she’d stolen from John for the night before putting on a brave face and sneaking back into his apartment.

This is better.

“To the last road trip,” she says, and drinks.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They should be getting back to the bunker and finding out what the wider implications of closing Hell are, and Mary’s selfishly glad that Sam and Dean exchange one look and then suggest they wait to leave until the pyre burns out. She’s sure she’ll feel guilty about it later, but for right now she just cannot stand another damn cosmic responsibility. Deanna had said she deserved to survive. Mary’s willing to say that she damn well deserves to spend the next few hours however she wants, and she doesn’t care how it sounds.

Kevin drags the pew out from the church so they’ll have somewhere to sit, and they scrunch up together and continue passing the bottle back and forth, sometimes drinking silently and sometimes sharing stories. The stories get alternately more outrageous and more maudlin as the bottle empties, and by the time the whiskey’s gone and Linda produces a bottle of tequila from nowhere in front of her scandalised son, Mary’s leaning heavily against Sam and is no longer worried about crying in public.

It’s bittersweet. Hunter funerals always are. Deanna’s loss is an aching hole in her chest, but Hell is closed and Mary’s surrounded by memories and her boys and people who have stories about her mother that Mary’s never even heard before. She’s glad for those and angry about them at the same time. Deanna had touched others the way she touched Mary, inspired them and comforted them and taught them how to survive, and that’s something to be proud of.

They also got time with her that Mary and her boys didn’t get and now never will, and it’s hard not to be jealous of that. Why does Kevin get to talk about the time Deanna tried to teach him to hustle pool and almost got them all arrested, if Sam barely even knew Deanna and Dean’s strongest memories of her are from a trip back in time to just before Deanna’s first death?

It’s not fair, it never is, and she’s tired of it. She’s been going for so long and trying so hard and she’s so very tired.

She’s dimly conscious of the pyre burning low and the voices around her getting quieter, but Sam’s shoulder is warm and solid under her cheek and she can feel Dean reach up from time to time to rub her back.

After a while she becomes aware of the sensation of being carried, and the shift in pressure as they pass through Oz and into the bunker. Someone far away says _Is she injured?_ and someone else answers _She’s fine, Cas, she’s just tired,_ and she wants to reach out because she’s pretty sure she hurt Cas’s feelings before she left for Louisiana, but her body is so heavy and it’s so hard to think.

She wakes up a little more when whoever’s carrying her puts her down on a bed, but the sensation of a warm quilt being pulled up over her shoulder and someone kissing her cheek and murmuring _Sleep tight, Mom_ reassures her that it’s okay not to wake up fully.

Still, she’s awake enough to be paying vague attention when Sam speaks.

“I can’t believe it’s done,” he says. “Even if it didn’t get rid of the demons the way we thought it would, we’ve been trying to close Hell for so long. It almost doesn’t seem real.”

“It’s real,” Dean says, and Mary frowns a little because he doesn’t sound happy. “And, uh, I guess I owe you an apology. You were right. I might not have liked it but it was your choice and I should have respected that.”

Oh, he’s apologising to Sam. That’s okay then.

“I owe you one too,” Sam says quietly. “I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to… well. Anyway. We both had hard choices to make.”

“Does this mean we can get friendship bracelets now?” Dean asks, very seriously.

“Jerk,” Sam says, affectionate and annoyed in equal measure, and Mary smiles a little before drifting off for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am _so sorry_. Deanna, no! :(
> 
> I don’t know what this chapter was like to read, but it was pretty hard to write (protip: if you know you’re going to be writing a really sad scene, maybe don’t try to write it on the sly while you’re at work). I went back and forth about it a _lot_ , and even at one point ended up sitting on the floor of my coworker’s office rambling incoherently about how I was a terrible person and was going to make everyone cry, culminating in the immortal phrase “I don’t _want_ to be Joss Whedon!”
> 
> As an emotional palate cleanser, as it were, I’ve posted a _Hail Mary_ outtake scene on my tumblr [here](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/post/91104158415/hail-mary-outtake-chapter-5) if you feel the need for something a little more lighthearted. It’s from Chapter 5, while Mary and Cas were traveling together and before they’d gone to meet Missouri, and it’s how I’d originally planned to introduce Charlie and Dorothy.
> 
> Also, that ‘laying a trail with lighter fluid’ thing actually does work - my dad used to light our brush pile that way every year. It’s best if the grass is wet beforehand and the person with the match knows what they’re doing, of course (bonus points: have that person be a firefighter), so kids: don’t try this at home!


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Some violence  
> SPOILERS: 6x22 ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’, 7x1 ‘Meet the New Boss’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Geography  
> NEW TAGS: None  
> NOTES: We’re moving into our busy season at work, i.e. the only time of year when we’re required to come in on the weekend in addition to during the work week. I know this is the home stretch of the story in which all the terribly exciting things start to happen, so I will do my damnedest to continue getting chapters out in a reasonably timely fashion! But if there’s a lag at any point, it’s entirely the fault of stupid irl things like ‘not getting fired’ and ‘being able to pay for internet’. *fistshake* You can take my free time, but you will never take my creativity!
> 
> (My original plan, of course, had been to finish the story before the busy season started. MWAHAHA TREMBLE AT HOW WELL MY PLANS WORK.)

Mary wakes up in a field.

She stands up and turns around, looking for any clues that will tell her where she is and how she came to be here, but there’s nothing. No trees, no roads, no buildings; just the gentle slope of the ground beneath her as it extends out to the horizon.

When she completes her turn, there’s a man in front of her.

She startles badly, but he doesn’t seem to realise she’s there. He’s pacing, agitated, and keeps looking out towards the horizon like he’s expecting to see something.

Mary frowns. She remembers her mother dy- she, she remembers her mother closing Hell, and she remember the pyre afterwards and falling asleep on Sam’s shoulder. She’s fairly sure that she remembers being carried back to the bunker, although that memory is soft-focus with exhaustion and she supposes it could be wrong.

Still. She shouldn’t be in a field with no edges, alone with a stranger.

Hang on.

“Are you an angel?” It doesn’t seem likely, given the current state of the angels, but it’s the only explanation she’s got. And at least in theory, Metatron and possibly Gadreel are still powered-up.

God, she hopes it isn’t Metatron. She owes him a broken nose just for what he’s done to Cas, and considerably more for what he’s done to everyone else, and she’s not really sure what will happen if she tries to murder a fully-powered angel in a dream environment. She’s not really sure what she’ll do if it’s Gadreel either, though. On the one hand he possessed Sam and manipulated Dean into lying and kicking Cas out, which is damage they’re all still trying to recover from, and then killed Kevin and at least one other person along the way. 

On the other hand he did heal Sam, and revived Cas and Charlie as well, which she does have to feel at least a little bit of gratitude for.

The man’s head snaps up when she speaks. “Mary Winchester. You’re finally asleep. Why do you never sleep? I thought it was mandatory for humans.”

Well, that answers that question. Part of it, anyway.

“Who are you?” Mary asks, raising a pointed eyebrow at him.

He takes several quick steps forward and then halts, coming as close as Mary’s ever seen an angel come to wringing his hands. “You were kind to me once.”

That doesn’t really narrow it down much - the angels she’s been kind to are all depowered now, and in any case she’d recognize them. That leaves Metatron, who she’s never knowingly met, and Gadreel, who she’d tricked into getting kicked out of Sam.

Well, she guesses they did have a reasonably cordial conversation before Gadreel realised he’d been had, although it seems like an awfully low bar for ‘kindness’. “Gadreel?”

His body language doesn’t relax an inch, but he nods.

“Okay,” Mary says, rubbing her head. If he’s still powered-up, then it looks like they were right to think he was working with Metatron. He could be here on Metatron’s behalf, but that doesn’t explain his nervousness or why he keeps glancing around as if he’s afraid of being overheard. 

If he’s here on his own for some reason, this could be an opportunity to find out what’s going on. She just wishes she could stop thinking about the fact that if Gadreel had come to her a few hours earlier, she might have been able to save Deanna. 

“Well, Gadreel, it’s nice to see you, but it’s been a pretty awful day, so do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Gadreel frowns. “Your people have closed Hell and dealt the demons a great blow. I would have thought it a cause for celebration.”

“It cost my mother her life,” Mary says, a little sharply, and has to stop for a moment to breathe around the pit in her chest.

“My condolences,” Gadreel says slowly, as if he’s only heard a rumor that this is the appropriate response and wants to test it out. “It was a meaningful end.”

God. _Angels._ “Thank you,” Mary says grudgingly. “Why did you need to talk to me?”

He does the not-quite hand-wringing thing again. “You were kind to me once, even though I had done things that should have made you hate me. You could have allowed the demon to continue with his persuasion and trusted that violence and pain would accomplish your goals, but you interrupted and you talked to me instead.”

That’s broadly true, although it paints her in a more flattering light than she really thinks she deserves. Her _son_ was at stake - if she’d thought it would work faster, she very well might have let Crowley continue with the torture. Gadreel seems to be waiting for a response, though, so she nods as noncommittally as possible.

He takes a tentative half-step forward. “I have done other things you should hate me for. Has Castiel told you who I am?”

“He said you guarded Eden,” Mary says. “And let the Serpent enter.” Cas had been extremely upset about that, although for Mary it’s more of an academic fairy-tale kind of interest. She knows that was supposedly the start of evil in the world (and the start of things like painful childbirth which, okay, she is emphatically not a fan of) and therefore of particularly human concern, but it’s so far removed from her own life that the knowledge doesn’t have much of an impact.

“I was told to protect the Garden from attack,” Gadreel says. “And I obeyed. And when the Serpent came and said ‘God sent me, let me in,’ I obeyed that too.” His mouth twists. “There was no word for ‘lie’ yet.”

“I bet that came as a shock,” Mary says neutrally. Gadreel has done terrible things, many of them to people she loves, but she can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. If Cas’s furious kneejerk reaction to finding out who Gadreel is was typical, then Gadreel’s spent a long time being punished for that one bit of trust.

“When the Fall came and I found myself amongst humanity,” Gadreel continues, “I thought I had been set free. I thought it was my chance to redeem myself, even if it was in small ways and only to a few humans.” He swallows. “And when Metatron came and told me he could help me redeem myself to _all_ angels, I agreed. And I did terrible things. Metatron told me to do them, but I was the one who carried them out.”

Mary watches him carefully. He’s inched a little bit closer to her as he spoke, and now he’s only a foot or two away. His expression is open and earnest, but she can’t help feeling that his close proximity is threatening. Whether or not he’s able to deal out physical harm in a dream setting, of course, remains to be seen.

“What are you trying to say?” she asks, keeping her voice steady and her expression blank. That last sentence could have been an apology, or it could be an apologetic prelude to another terrible thing.

“Metatron betrayed us all,” he says, glancing nervously around them and leaning in close. “I am a guard, still, and you chose kindness over violence. Tell me what to do.”

For a moment Mary just stares at him. What Gadreel’s offering is tempting, assuming it’s genuine; they have no idea what Metatron did to depower the angels, and now that they’ve closed Hell it’s entirely possible he’ll come up with some new way to rebalance the scales to his liking. Having someone on the inside could be extremely useful.

She looks at Gadreel’s anxious expression, and sighs internally. Even with everything he’s done, her conscience just won’t let her take advantage of this.

“Look,” she says gently, “doing what you were told is what got you into trouble in the first place. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to decide what to do by yourself.”

Gadreel frowns. “I did decide. I decided to come to you, and I can decide not to do what you say. But I don’t know what to _do.”_

Mary wavers. “Okay, fair enough,” she says finally. This is going to go over _so well_ with Sam and Dean. And Cas. And - oh God - _Kevin_. “Do you know how Metatron depowered the angels?”

Gadreel shakes his head, frustrated. “No. He has been very secretive about it.”

“So we have no idea if he might be able to do something else, too,” Mary says, grimacing.

“Do you want me to find out?” Gadreel asks.

Mary considers this. The quick answer is ‘yes’, but there’s more to consider than that. Besides the fact that he managed to hide in Sam for quite some time, she’s not sure how good Gadreel is at subterfuge, and given Metatron’s mania for stories and his proven ability to manipulate others she has to guess that he’ll be tough to fool. Getting Gadreel killed won’t do anyone any good. “Are there any other angels who still have their Graces?”

Gadreel waves one hand dismissively. “Metatron asked me to recruit a few before he - before, but they are frightened and too grateful to have been allowed back into Heaven to act against him.”

Disappointing, but it does give her an idea. “Do you have access to the hunters in Heaven?” She doesn’t want to give him any specific names, just to be on the safe side, but at least it’s a direction to go in.

Gadreel tilts his head. “Yes. You think they could help?”

“Possibly.” They might be able to keep an eye on him, too. Nobody does paranoid and mistrustful like an old hunter. “See what they have to say. Some of them were pretty good with lore when they were alive. Oh, and whatever you can do to keep Metatron’s attention off of us would probably be for the best.”

Gadreel nods thoughtfully. “At the moment he seems most interested in the greater misery of Malachi and Bartholomew and their followers, but I will do what I can.”

She doesn’t like being glad about someone else’s misery, but maybe if Metatron is entertained enough by Malachi and Bartholomew he’ll lay off the rest of them for a while. “Okay. Good enough.”

Gadreel nods decisively. “Would you like to wake now or continue resting until morning?”

“Uh,” Mary says. This is the first time she’s ever actually had that choice. “Keep sleeping, I guess.” If anything really problematic is happening Cas or the boys will wake her, and until then it’s probably best to be as well-rested as possible.

“I will send you to a pleasant place,” Gadreel says, and reaches out to touch her forehead with two fingers.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes some indeterminate amount of time later, fresh out of dream in which, as far as she could tell, she sat underwater and watched molecules move. It was weirdly kind of soothing.

Angel dreams. Go figure.

She’s in her room at the bunker, which indicates that her vague memories from last night after the - after, after they closed Hell were accurate. Everything seems to be quiet, and when she checks her watch she sees that it’s about five in the morning. No wonder, then.

She feels emptied out and a little hungover, but otherwise pretty okay, and when she rolls over she finds Cas fast asleep in the chair by the desk. He’s tried to curl himself up in it and looks spectacularly uncomfortable.

She lets out a quiet, fond huff of laughter. Cas doesn’t even twitch - his eyes might as well be glued shut.

She watches him sleep for a moment. She needs to tell him about her conversation with Gadreel, but it’s not of immediate importance and going by the smudges under Cas’s eyes he can use all the sleep he can get, even if it’s awkward half-slumped over a desk sleep that’s got to be making at least two of his limbs completely numb. It’s kind of peaceful, actually, to lie here and watch him breathe. Not quite like watching Sammy in his crib, but close.

Eventually, though, the thought of the crick Cas is going to get in his neck spurs her into action. He might need sleep, but he’ll probably also need to be able to move when he wakes up, so she slips out of bed and touches him gently on the shoulder.

Nothing. She tries a slightly harder shake, and he finally half-opens his eyes and gives her a bleary look.

“Okay?” he mumbles.

Well, at least she doesn’t have to feel too bad about ruining his sleep. She’ll bet her angel blade that as soon as she stops bugging him he’ll be out like a light again in no time. “Everything’s fine, kiddo. Can you stand up for me?”

He mostly manages it, but it’s a short trip to the bed anyway. She tips him over, belatedly remembering to slow his fall so he won’t land awkwardly and hurt his throat, and he barely shifts enough to get comfortable before he’s unconscious again.

“Geez, Cas, did you sleep at all while we were gone?” Mary says, amused, but her amusement slips when her brain catches up with her mouth. Of course Cas hadn’t slept. All of his most important people were off closing Hell, and he was stuck behind guarding the car. Through no fault of his own, of course, although she’s pretty sure that’s an unimportant point to him.

As soon as he’s able to stay conscious for a whole conversation, she really needs to talk to him. Not just because she’s sure he’s feeling some kind of way about being depowered just in time to be sidelined from a major blow against Hell, but because…

Well. He’s her friend. She _likes_ talking to him. And she’s - Sam and Dean were great, they were _beyond_ great, but she can’t - 

Cas is her friend, that’s all.

She carefully peels back the bandage on his throat to check his wound (healing, but a little red - he probably hadn’t been taking it easy while they were gone) and then slips out of the room. It’s early, but she’ll bet there’s someone awake who can give her an idea of what’s going on in the world.

The kitchen and library are empty, but there are signs of life in the atrium. Dorothy is asleep on a makeshift bedroll against one wall and Charlie’s sitting at the map table. Instead of her usual frantic, exhausted appearance, she’s combing her hair and looking well-rested and freshly-showered. She even smiles as Mary comes in, although her expression falters a little bit when she remembers what’s happened since the last time they’d seen each other.

“Hi. Um. How are -”

“So, how’s the home front?” Mary interrupts, making her way to Charlie’s side of the table. She keeps her voice low, since Dorothy’s sleeping, but a glance in her direction confirms that Dorothy’s just as solidly out as Cas was. “And, you know, the front-front.”

Charlie takes Mary’s cue and puts her comb away, getting down to business. “It’s pretty quiet. The demons seem to be just as thrown by Hell closing as the angels were after getting depowered, so they’re kind of shell-shocked right now. Bela’s called and cursed us out for not warning her like three times already.”

“She have anything useful to add?” Mary asks, picking up Charlie’s comb and moving around behind her. Charlie stills as Mary begins to comb her hair, and then tilts her head to give Mary better access.

Charlie shrugs one shoulder. “Well, good news/bad news. She says that Abaddon seems to still have all her powers, like Joshua did, but she’s also definitely still stuck here like the rest of them. And, um, possibly a little unstable. We’re not sure how that’s going to work out yet. And we want to start setting up some speakers and broadcasting exorcisms, but we’ve never had as good an idea about where the demons are as we had for the angels so we’re still working on it. Demons are a lot better at blending in.”

“True enough,” Mary says. She starts separating Charlie’s hair into sections, working her way from the crown of Charlie’s head and adding more strands as she braids. “How about the virus?”

“Holding pattern,” Charlie says, her voice getting muffled as she bends her head more. Her shoulders are starting to droop a little as she relaxes. Mary vividly remembers how nice it could feel to have someone else play with her hair, and for a moment a pang of longing hits her so hard that she can’t speak. 

“No new outbreaks,” Charlie continues, oblivious, “but no miracle cures either. Bela’s trying to find out if Hell closing means Abaddon can’t trigger them any more. We’ve never been sure if it’s something Abaddon does with demon powers or if she needs, like, a physical artifact to make it work. She’s very cagey about it, apparently.”

Mary hums thoughtfully. Honestly, she’d never thought about what the process of producing the virus would entail - it was enough of a problem just trying to stay ahead of it, and it wasn’t like there hadn’t always been a dozen other things going on at the same time.

“Mary?” Charlie says, and then stops.

Mary finishes the braid and digs in her pocket for a hair tie. “Yes?”

“I’m, I’m sorry. About your mom. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Mary hesitates for a long moment, and then kisses the top of Charlie’s head, right where the braid starts. “My mom used to braid my hair like this when we went on a hunt. She called it my battle braid.” It’s amazing how steady her voice is.

“ _Oh,”_ Charlie whispers. “I - thank you. For… thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She doesn’t blame Charlie for anything, she honestly doesn’t, but for some reason the actual words won’t come out. The braid is as close as she can get. 

She smooths Charlie’s hair down one last time. “Thanks for the update.”

“Sure,” Charlie says, still hushed and a little shaken.

Mary doesn’t look back as she crosses the atrium and walks into the library. She could go down to the kitchen now, start some coffee and maybe some breakfast for the early risers. She could go check on the other inhabitants of the bunker, wherever they are. Dorothy’s makeshift bed in the atrium would indicate that when they aren’t sleeping in shifts there may not be enough beds for everyone, and she should probably see if she can do something about that. 

She could go down to the garage and look at the scorchmark on the wall. It’s not like she’s got any pictures of D- of anything any more. The scorchmark is as close as she can get.

She stops for a moment and just breathes, and then she goes back to her own room. 

Cas is still asleep, but he’s shifted a little to one side so there’s room for Mary to lie down on the bed next to him. The bed is just big enough that she can face him without going crosseyed, although their knees bump.

He blinks awake as the mattress moves under her weight and watches silently as she settles herself. He doesn’t seem startled to see her so close.

Mary watches him for a long moment without saying anything, just studying his face. Anyone else would probably be uncomfortable about the scrutiny, but Cas doesn’t seem to mind. He has very blue eyes. She’d known that before, of course, but it’s not often she gets the chance to really _study_ someone else’s eyes. That much eye contact is awkward, or it should be.

That’s Cas, though. Normal rules get a little wonky around him.

“My mom died,” she says.

“I know,” he says quietly. “We all felt Hell close.”

She hadn’t let herself cry much, before. She’d cried a little bit on Dean, and a little bit more later by the pyre, but she’d held it back as much as possible. She hadn’t wanted her boys to have to deal with it and she hadn’t wanted to cry in front of people she didn’t really know. She _really_ hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Crowley.

It would be okay to cry in front of Cas, though.

Cas holds her until she’s done. He doesn’t try to tell her everything will be all right or try to soothe her into calming down. He just wraps his arms around her and lets her sob into his chest.

“Would you like some hot chocolate?” he asks when she’s starting to wind down.

Mary laughs between her sobs and winds up giving herself the hiccups. “No, thank you, Cas. I’m fine.” She wipes her cheeks with her sleeves and takes a deep breath. “Sorry for crying all over you.”

“It was an honor,” Cas says sincerely.

Mary smiles a little. That’s certainly one way of looking at it. “I’m sorry we left you behind, too. You get that it’s because we want to protect you and not because we think you’re helpless, right?”

“That seems like a very fine line,” Cas says, a little taken aback. He breathes in and holds it, looking torn, and Mary waits patiently while he sorts himself out.

“I know…” he says finally, “I know it wasn’t my place to go. I know that it was a time for family. You don’t have to -”

“Don’t you _dare_ finish that sentence, Castiel,” Mary says sharply, pushing herself up on one elbow.

“It’s all right,” Cas says, sitting up and watching her anxiously. “It doesn’t upset me, it’s just something I understand to be true. I have observed Sam and Dean long enough to learn it. I was - I admit I was angry at first, but I’ve had time to think about it now.”

“ _No,”_ Mary says. She feels hot and cold all over, a visceral reaction to what Cas is saying. “I just lost my mother, Cas, don’t you dare try to take - how can you - _don’t_ -” she tangles herself up too much to continue and buries her face in her hands.

“Mary?” Cas says tentatively. “Do you -”

“Stop.” She holds up one hand. “Just - just shut up a minute.”

She takes a deep breath, forcing back the knee-jerk panic response, and lifts her head. Cas is watching her warily, and she makes herself imagine what it must look like from his perspective, how it must feel to exist on the periphery of Sam and Dean’s intense relationship and see them time and time again choose each other over anything else. She can’t entirely condemn that behavior, because it led to them surviving long enough for her to meet them both again, but she’s removed enough from the situation to know it still wasn’t always for the best. 

Given Cas’s inexperience with humans when he first arrived, she’s kind of embarrassed it took her this long to see what effect that relationship has had on him. Of course he thinks coming second is normal, or at least to be expected.

“Cas,” she says finally, “there’s more than just ‘family’ and ‘not family’, okay? I’m related to Sam and Dean by blood and I love them fiercely, but I _chose_ you, and that’s powerful too.”

Cas nods politely, clearly placating her, and she sighs. “Kiddo. You chose _us_ , right?”

He sucks in a breath. “I did,” he says quietly. “I did choose you. Many times. But it’s not - you have all done extraordinary things to help me, and Sam and Dean have risked their lives on my behalf, and I am immeasurably grateful for all of it. It’s okay that we don’t think of each other the same way. I’m content with what I have.”

“You have more than you think, Cas,” Mary says firmly. “I don’t know what happened between you and the boys in the past and what other factors might have been at work, but I know me and I know you. Remember what I told you when we did the resurrection spell? Who I wanted you to bring back more than anyone else?”

Cas nods, looking down. Mary takes his chin and guides his face up. “I need it in words, sweetie. Who did I want back?”

“Me,” Cas says softly. “You chose me.”

Mary smiles at him. “There you go. Family’s about more than blood, kiddo. It’s about love, and we love you. Yesterday we wanted you to stay behind because you’d just been hurt and we wanted you to be able to heal before you might get hurt again. It wasn’t because we wanted to exclude you and it wasn’t because we thought you’d be a burden, and I’m sorry I wasn’t in a place to explain that to you at the time. Do you understand it now?”

Cas swallows hard and looks away. “Bobby… Bobby used to say that family was more than blood, too.”

“Well, then I’m glad there was someone with good sense looking after all of you,” Mary says. She leans forward and kisses him on the forehead.

Cas smiles shyly, and then his face falls. “I was supposed to be comforting you.”

Mary shrugs. “You already let me cry all over you, Cas. And besides, you may have noticed that I like taking care of people.” It’s been both an advantage and a disadvantage to her in the past. Focusing on others has allowed her to pick herself up and keep on going when anyone else would have quit, but if she’s not careful she can go too far and lose herself. When she’d been married to John she’d buried every unhappiness into taking care of the boys, and taking care of John when he would let her. What would have happened if she’d made herself stop and look around and think? Would she have warded the house better, kept her weapons closer, maintained some ties to the hunting community?

It’s impossible to say for sure, of course, and there are a lot of other factors to consider - divine intervention not the least of them. 

Still.

“That’s true,” Cas says thoughtfully, and Mary forces her attention back to the conversation at hand. She’s completely lost the thread of it now, so she grabs the first thing that comes to mind. 

“Gadreel wants to help us against Metatron.”

Cas’s jaw honest-to-God drops, and Mary winces. She’d planned to ease him into that a lot more, try to get a feel for his reaction before unloading the whole situation. As it is, she’s not sure if his ability to see the strategic value of an inside source will outweigh his feelings about Gadreel’s original betrayal.

“He visited you? Are you all right?”

Mary blinks. “I’m fine, Cas. He just wanted to talk.”

Cas’s eyes narrow. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” Mary says reassuringly. “I let him do most of the talking. He already knew about us closing Hell and I told him my mother had died, but that was it. He said he didn’t know that Metatron had been planning to completely depower the angels and he didn’t want to be part of it any more, so I asked him to see if he could find out what Metatron used for it. And I said that if he could keep Metatron’s attention off of us it would probably be for the best.”

Cas doesn’t look happy, but she can’t tell if it’s because of her conversation with Gadreel or if it’s just due to Gadreel himself. “How sure are you that this isn’t a ruse?”

“Well, not certain,” Mary says, shrugging. “But about as certain as I could be. He made sure I knew about all the things he’d done before he asked me to give him orders.”

Cas shakes his head, but he looks a little less dubious. This isn’t the first time he’s run up against angels who need to be directed. “I don’t like it, but I suppose there’s merit to the plan if it works. You were clever to give him the orders you did - those are things we would want no matter what our plans were. Did he have any idea what spell Metatron used?”

Mary smiles at the praise. “No, but he said Metatron was pretty focused on watching Malachi and Bartholomew and their people.”

Cas scowls. “I’m not surprised. They are much less resilient than the angels who chose to ally with humans, and there was no one at hand to ease their transition to humanity. The hunters we sent to check on them reported back that they are in bad shape. I’m sure Metatron finds it…” he chews over the word for a moment, looking disgusted. “...Satisfying.”

Mary waits until she can catch his eye. “Are you okay with the fact that it’s Gadreel?”

Cas grimaces. “I dislike him and the things he has done, but I can’t deny that I have also done terrible things. I will reserve judgment for the time being.”

_And trust,_ Mary bets, but she doesn’t blame him. She holds a hand out instead. “Want to help me get breakfast ready?”

Cas takes her hand and considers her offer. “I will require hot chocolate as payment.”

“I think I require some too,” Mary agrees. “Let’s go.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The rest of the day passes quietly. The communications team spends most of it collecting reports from the field teams about demon activity in their areas (very little) or any rumors they’ve heard (very few, although the fundamental shift caused by Hell’s doors closing did not go entirely unnoticed. The more extreme conspiracy sites have some entertaining theories, which Charlie regales them with over lunch). Rebekah spends the morning on the phone too, checking in with her angels and making sure they’re all coping with their sudden humanity.

They do hear from Bela again, once she’s calmed down enough to engage in actual conversation, and she grudgingly agrees to try and pinpoint groups of demons for them so they can go in with an exorcism. Mary’s sure that Bela will be far away from any of those sites before she has a chance to get caught in the crossfire, which she supposes is fair enough payment for Bela’s continuing loyalty.

After lunch, Kevin helps Mary check over her weapons-and-supplies stockpiles and suggests a few different locations or additional items. Dorothy starts teaching Linda some fighting techniques, much to the dismay of her son, and Rufus vanishes into the depths of the bunker with Missouri, probably to root out as many secrets as he can. Sam settles himself at a table in the library adjacent to the perpetually ongoing Aaoxaif-and-Gagiel research party and begins cleaning and reloading everyone’s guns, the traditional hunters’ downtime activity. Most hunters probably don’t listen to books on tape about mythology at the same time, though.

Everything goes to shit after dinner.

Mary and Dean are clearing away dishes and boxing up leftovers when Missouri sticks her head into the kitchen and says “Dean. You’re needed upstairs.”

Her voice is serious and intense, and Dean immediately drops everything and follows her. Mary rushes through the rest of the cleanup, shifting her priorities from ‘tidy kitchen’ to ‘spoilable food in the refrigerator’, and hurries up the stairs after them. She’s assuming everyone’s in the atrium - if there’s a crisis coming, it’s the most logical place to gather.

She doesn’t make it. She gets as far as the library and nearly runs into Sam, Dorothy, and Rufus, who are heading down towards the basement with grim purpose.

“What happened?” Mary asks. They’re all armed, which isn’t reassuring.

“Rescue mission,” Dorothy says curtly. “We could use help, if you’re up for it.”

“Of course,” Mary says. She has her angel blade and her gun on her - even during a relatively low-key day in the safety of the bunker it seemed like a good plan to have them on hand, and she readies both as they make their way down past the archives. “Who are we rescuing and from what?”

“Abaddon’s started attacking the Croatoan enclosures,” Sam says.

“They’re trying to release the virus?” Mary guesses, glancing back and forth between the two of them. She supposes that answers the question of whether or not Abaddon can cause the virus by herself any more. “Have they succeeded?”

“Not sure yet,” Rufus says. 

“Well, has anyone gotten in touch with Bela?” Mary asks. if anyone’s going to have insight into Abaddon’s plans, it would be her.

Dorothy shakes her head. “Only briefly. She called to let us know something was up, but her phone went dead before she could fully warn us. Nothing since.”

Well, that’s a spectacularly bad sign. “How organized is this?” Mary asks, her heart sinking. They’d assumed that the demons were quiet because they were in shock after being cut off from Hell. Demons are very different from angels - suspicious and more accustomed to working alone, for one thing - but it’s not out of the question to think that once they found themselves half-powered and vulnerable they would be more likely to willingly follow the plans of a fully powered Knight. Especially since Crowley, the only real challenger to Abaddon’s faction, is now completely human.

By closing Hell they may have actually _helped_ Abaddon, and that thought burns.

“Not sure yet,” Rufus says again. “We’re pulling Tracey Bell and Mackey in from Roanoke and I know Ellen and Jo fought them off in Bangor with an exorcism over a bullhorn, but that’s not going to work again.”

“Why not?” Mary asks, frowning.

Sam looks disgusted. “They’re wearing earplugs now.”

Mary gives him an incredulous look. “That actually works? They have to _hear_ the exorcism?”

“Apparently, yes,” Rufus says, looking just as put out.

“It’s so unfair,” Sam mutters, and despite the seriousness of the situation Mary has to laugh a little.

Dorothy pulls them to a halt in front of a large, iron-bound door. “All right, this should work.” She slots the Oz key into place and pulls it open. It’s well-balanced and still oiled and swings open surprisingly easily, revealing a small room just beyond with a door set into the back wall. The only indication that it’s in another dimension is an odd green cast to the light.

“Okay,” Dorothy says, taking a deep breath and bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “I have a pretty good idea of where Tracey Bell and Mackey are, but if we’re even a door or two off we’ll wind up in the middle of a bunch of Croats, so be on your guard. I don’t want to let them into Oz or the bunker, but I’ve opened us a way into the secure storage in the palace. If all else fails, we can hotfoot it into the bunker and slam the door shut behind us.”

It’s a decent plan, particularly given that Dorothy must have come up with it in the last three minutes. Still… “Maybe someone should stand by the bunker door and be ready to shut it, just in case,” Mary suggests.

Dorothy nods curtly. “Yeah, why don’t you...” she stops, just for a second, and glances at Mary. “Why don’t you come up front with me. Sam, take the door. It’s a lot heavier than it looks.”

“But -” Sam protests.

Mary sends Dorothy a grateful look. She doubts she’d be able to sit back and watch while her son was in danger.

“Sam, if everything goes wrong you might have to close that door even if one of us is still on the other side,” Rufus says. “Can you do that?”

Sam glances at Mary, who gives him a nod. He swallows, looking torn. “Yeah. Okay.”

God, she hopes it doesn’t come to that. Setting aside the trauma to Sam and the fact that she herself would _die_ , she’s pretty sure her death would also tank Cas’s doomsday plan. Technically she doesn’t know what it is, but she’s formed some suspicions. And if this latest gambit of Abaddon’s snowballs the way Abaddon’s obviously hoping it will, they might still need that plan, whether Hell is closed or not.

Given that, technically she should probably be the one on the relatively safe door duty, but before she can force herself to say something Dorothy twists the Oz key in the lock and throws the door open.

Their first attempt to get through is anticlimactic - they get a view of a downtown street, deserted but for some figures moving under a streetlight in the distance. Mary and Rufus trade looks and adjust their grips on their weapons as Dorothy shuts the door and tries again.

This time it’s a lot more exciting. They come in behind Tracey Bell and Mackey, who are barricaded into what looks like a lawyer’s office. Mackey screams when he sees them appear in what turns out to be a coat closet, and Tracey Bell nearly shoots them, only pulling back at the last moment.

“Get in here! Move!” Rufus barks.

Tracey Bell grabs Mackey by his jacket and drags him towards the door. The barricade crumbles behind them and Croats spill into the room, spotting them instantly and breaking into a run.

Tracey Bell and Mackey tumble through into Oz and Dorothy slams the door shut after them. It catches briefly on a Croat’s arm, but Mary slashes at it with her angel blade even as it tries to grab her hair. It jerks back, apparently still just human enough to respond to pain, and the latch clicks shut. Dorothy and Mary exchange a wide-eyed look.

“Got to admit, I didn’t anticipate the smell,” Rufus says, revolted.

“The fuck are we?” Tracey Bell says between pants, glancing around.

“Long story,” Sam says from the bunker door. He looks pale but steady. “You’re in a safehouse now. Are either of you hurt?”

Damn. Mary hadn’t even considered that one of them might be infected. How long is the incubation period for the virus? She has no idea.

“We’re okay,” Tracey Bell says, straightening up. “Mackey twisted his knee, but all it needs is some ice.”

They limp through Sam’s door and into the hallway, shutting it with relief behind them.

“I never want to do _that_ again,” Dorothy says fervently.

Kevin comes up to them at a jog. “Oh, hey, Tracey. Guys, Dean wants to know if you can go get Ellen and Jo?”

“Okay, let’s do that again,” Dorothy sighs.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Retrieving Ellen and Jo turns out to not be too bad - they’ve warded the enclosure in Bangor as well as they can and Dean’s probably being over-cautious in recalling them - but after that they have to rescue Walt and Roy from Amherst, and then a group of four hunters Mary doesn’t know from Springfield, and then the sole survivor of an attack outside of Memphis. She’s an ex-angel and their first potentially infected rescuee, and is guided gently away by Rebekah and Hannah to a cell to be watched.

“This doesn’t look too good,” Dorothy says, leaning up against the wall. A few Croats had made it through the Oz door in Memphis, and they’d had a brisk fight on their hands before successfully pushing them back. “What’s happening around the places we’re evacuating from? Are they still contained somehow?”

Mary shakes her head. She doesn’t know, but she doubts it. 

“Looks organized to me,” Rufus says darkly. “She seems to be targeting places that are guarded by hunters and located in populated areas. Sam, you know anything?”

Sam’s gotten grimmer and grimmer as the day has progressed. Memphis had been particularly hard on him. 

He shakes his head. “Just what you heard before we came down here. If I had to guess, though, I’d say Abaddon’s pissed at us.”

It’s not that funny, but Mary laughs and Sam’s expression lightens just a fraction.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They’re relieved sometime early the next morning by Walt, Tracey Bell, and one of the hunters Mary doesn’t know, shortly after pulling Isaac and Tamara out of Amarillo. Tpau had been with them as well, but there had been no sign of Omia and Tamara had shaken her head when she saw Mary looking.

Dorothy stays behind with the Oz key, since the only other person with any experience at using it is Charlie and she can’t be spared from her work in the atrium, and the rest of them stagger upstairs promising to send some coffee and a snack down for her. Cas meets them in the library and pulls Mary to the side, looking intense and upset.

“You shouldn’t have risked yourself,” he says, scowling.

Mary sighs. She’s exhausted and sore and she thinks she might have pulled something when a Croat grabbed her wrist and tried to eat her in Jonesboro. She wants to take a shower and _scrub_ until she can’t smell a damn thing but chemically-produced Floral Breeze.

Sam has curled up in one of the library chairs and immediately gone to sleep, so she pulls Cas down to sit next to her on the steps to the kitchen and leans against him. “Cas, how bad is it?”

Cas leans back against her a little. “It isn’t good,” he admits. “Abaddon has whipped the demons into a frenzy, and in their confusion and anger they’ve thrown caution and subtlety to the wind. Charlie’s information gambit seems to be helping a little, but their tactics are beginning to escalate.”

“You’ve heard from Bela?” Mary guesses.

“And Crowley has made some conjectures,” Cas says, and his mouth gives a wry twist at her skeptical expression. “He made the point that he’ll be Abaddon’s first target if captured, just like I was Heaven’s for casting the angels out. I don’t trust him, but I do trust his self-interest.” He hesitates for a moment. “Dorothy and the others are trying to save Victor and Garth right now.”

Mary straightens, cold with foreboding. “We lost Boston?”

“And Manhattan,” Cas says. “And Charlie is starting to come across reports from overseas. Abaddon may not be able to spontaneously create the virus any more, but she can still put those who are already infected on a plane.”

Mary puts her hands over her mouth and tries not to be sick. “Cas. I think it might be time for your doomsday plan.”

“Not yet,” Cas says immediately. “Not until we have no other options. There is no guarantee the plan will work, and if it goes badly the repercussions…” he shakes his head. “Aaoxaif and Gagiel and I have been working hard on a graceless version of the cleansing spell. We may yet succeed. And there’s always the possibility that we can involve Gadreel if we have to.”

He must be pretty desperate if he’s considering _that._ “It’s too much for one angel to fix by himself, even if he has all his mojo,” Mary says as gently as possible. “It took _three_ to fix McClave. You can’t hold off on the plan just because it involves me.”

“You have no idea what danger it will put you in!” Cas snaps.

“The personal amuletic decree, the fact that it requires the two of us and just a tiny bit of Grace?” Mary says. “You think you’ve got a way that I can say yes and control Israfel. And yeah, that scares me, but Cas - people are _dying._ That kind of outweighs some danger to just one person.”

“They’re not dying,” Cas says sharply, standing up. “They’re being infected, and we’ve seen that the infection can be cured. This is, it’s recoverable. There’s no need for the plan yet. And we don’t even know - Israfel is powerful, more powerful than even the archangels, and should in theory be capable of altering the very fabric of creation, but too much is still unknown. No, I need to do more research. And the plan isn’t necessary yet anyway.”

“So how do we know when it’s time?” Mary asks patiently.

Cas turns away from her, his back rigid. “Not yet.”

She can’t force him to do it, and it won’t work without him. “I think we’re going to get there, Cas. You need to get yourself ready for it.”

He turns back just far enough to glare at her. “I have ordered legions of my brethren to their deaths. I will be ready.” It comes across as sad rather than intimidating, and it’s that more than anything else that makes Mary let it go for the moment.

“All right, Cas. I’m going to go check on Dean.” She can nap and clean herself up afterwards. This has got to be freaking him out pretty badly, and honestly, checking on him will make her feel a lot better, too.

“I will accompany you,” Cas says. “There is much still to be done.”

Cas obligingly pulls her to her feet and they make their way to the atrium. There are enough people gathered there that Mary can’t even see Dean at first, although she knows that he must be by the map table. In amongst the hunters she doesn’t know well she spots Ellen in deep conversation with Linda and Tamara, and Missouri poring over something on a tablet with Rebekah, and then she’s brought up short by a sudden thought. 

“Cas, has anyone heard from Jody?”

To her surprise, Cas smiles. “Yes. She has barricaded the town, armed and trained the townspeople, and successfully repelled two demon attacks already. When we asked her if she wanted an extraction she said ‘What? And blow my chances of re-election?’”

Mary laughs, partly in amusement and partly from relief. If anyone was going to pull something like that off, it _would_ be Jody.

They make their way around the edge of the crowd, and Mary finally catches sight of Dean. He’s leaning over the map table while Jo and Charlie debate above him; from the way they both keep gesturing to the map Mary’s guessing it’s a disagreement over rescue strategies. Charlie’s hair is still braided, although it’s starting to look a little bedraggled. She seems to have picked up a habit of playing with the end of the braid while she talks.

As Mary watches, Dean straightens and cuts them both off, clearly making a final decision. The largest group of hunters nearby breaks off and heads in the direction of Dorothy and the other rescuers.

Dean probably looks confident and capable to everyone else. To Mary he mostly looks terrified.

“I’m going to go talk to him,” Mary says.

Cas gives Dean a piercing look. “Yes, that would be wise.” He heads towards Ellen’s little group, leaving Mary to make her way to the map table alone.

Dean looks up as she gets close, and summons a smile for her from somewhere. “Mom, hey. You look beat.”

“Well, fighting the legions of evil, you know,” Mary says. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure,” Dean says, concerned. “Not to jinx anything, but it seems to be slowing down a little bit.” 

The library is occupied, so Dean leads her over to a sheltered corner across from the stairs, where he can keep an eye on things but they can’t easily be seen.

“What’s up?”

“I wanted to check on you, actually,” Mary says, giving him a hug. “This must have you pretty spooked.”

Dean returns the embrace tentatively. “I’m okay, Mom. Really.”

“Dean,” Mary says pointedly. “ _I’m_ spooked and I never went to a post-apocalyptic future that involved a bunch of this stuff.”

Dean breathes out. “Okay. It’s kind of spooky.”

Mary threads her fingers through the hair at the back of his head. “It’s all right to be scared. I know you have to look together for the others, but you don’t have to do it for me. For one thing, I’m just going to see through it, so. Save yourself the effort.”

Dean laughs a little and tightens his arms. “I, um,” he says finally. “Yeah. I am scared. I’m… I know everybody’s made really good arguments about Zachariah being a hack and how many differences there are between here and there - I mean, we didn’t have the bunker then, that’s a big one - but it… it can be a little hard to see, sometimes.” He ducks his head down. “I don’t want to watch everybody die, Mom.”

“Oh, baby,” Mary says, rubbing his back. She wants to tell him it’ll never happen and of course she’ll keep him safe, but they both know those are empty words. “I know. And I’ll do everything I can to keep you from having to do that, okay? Look… we’ve been keeping it quiet because it’s sort of defeatist, but Cas is working on a plan in case everything goes south.”

She’d only expected it to be a little bit of comfort, but Dean frowns and leans back so he can see her face. “Uh-oh. Has he told you what it is?”

“Technically no, but I’ve pretty much figured it out on my own,” Mary says, confused by his tone.

“Why are you guys hiding over here?” Sam asks from behind Dean, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Cas has a worst-case scenario plan,” Dean says resignedly.

“A good one or a bad one?” Sam asks.

“Okay, Cas is a tactician. He makes good plans,” Mary says, a little exasperated.

“Well, actually it’s usually about fifty-fifty,” Sam says apologetically. “Especially if the stakes are high. He played Crowley pretty well that one time.”

“And then went crazy and killed half of Heaven,” Dean points out, rolling his eyes.

Sam winces. “Okay, but to be fair it worked up until then. I mean, he was right - he was able to take out Raphael and keep the angel civil war from spilling over, which I think we all realise now would have been a pretty big deal.”

“Leviathan!” Dean points out.

“Fine, but he could hardly -”

“Dean! _Dean!”_

Dean’s head whips around at Charlie’s frantic tone. “What is it?”

Charlie’s standing up by the map table, holding out her phone. “It’s Bela! Dean, this sounds bad.”

“Shit,” Dean mutters, and then turns back to Mary and says hurriedly “Look, just don’t let him do anything until you know what the plan is, okay?” He heads for the map table at a jog before Mary can answer.

“I _know_ what the plan - never mind,” Mary sighs. She’s pretty sure now that Sam and Dean are going to hate it.

Dean reaches the map table and clicks on the phone’s speaker. “Bela?” 

“Dean.” Bela’s voice is staticky and garbled. “Abaddon’s on her way to destroy the bunker. You have to get out now.”

Mary’s stomach clenches. Is that even possible? The bunker’s supposed to be safe.

“What?” Dean says reflexively, paling. “Bela, no, it’s protected -”

“I’m pretty sure she knows how to get past that, Dean!” Bela snaps. “You have to get out _now_ -” 

There’s a squawk of feedback, drowning Bela out for a moment, and then they all hear her say “ _Oh, fuck,”_ and the phone goes dead.

“But the bunker’s protected,” Dean repeats, ashen. “We’re safe here.”

“Abaddon possessed a Woman of Letters, though,” Sam says. He looks stunned too, but his brain is still working. “She might know something we don’t. I mean, I’ve never even figured out where our water and power come from. There’s too much we don’t know. Dean, I don’t think we can afford not to take this seriously.”

Mary can understand why they look so badly unnerved. They’ve lived in the bunker for far longer than she has, and the idea of losing it is almost a physical blow. There’s information and resources here, but more than that it’s a _sanctuary_. It’s headquarters. How can they run a counterattack if they don’t have a base of operations? Where can they go that will feel as protected as here?

“We can evacuate to Oz and figure out where to go from there,” Ellen says briskly, taking over. “Hannah, go tell Dorothy to find a bigger door and get it ready. Kevin and Tamara, start grabbing us some supplies and weapons - as many as you can carry.”

“We have some stockpiles,” Kevin says, glancing at Mary.

“Good. Rebekah, Missouri,” Ellen says, raising her voice, “spread the word to the others, get everyone ready to go. We leave in five minutes. That’s five minutes, people! Gather in the garage for the time being.”

“Bela might be lying,” Dean protests numbly.

With a click, the bunker’s lights go out, replaced a moment later with dim emergency lighting.

The room explodes into activity. Mary reaches out and grabs Cas’s arm. 

“It’s time, Cas.”

Cas shakes his head, but Mary barrells on. “You know this is our best opportunity. If the bunker is destroyed and it looks like everyone dies, they’ll believe that I want to say yes. Cain’s older than Abaddon, so if she’s still juiced up he should be too, and I bet he’s still outside.” She hopes. “He can protect me. The rest of you need to go now.”

He clearly wants to argue, but he’s too much of a tactician to ignore the evidence. Even more than that - Dean and Sam are now directly in danger, and there’s nothing Cas won’t do to save the Winchesters. 

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and nods.

She wishes she’d had time to explain this to the boys. She wishes she’d had time to think about it, _really_ think, and kind of nerve herself up, but maybe it’s better that it’s happening fast and she can’t worry about it too much.

“Okay. What do we need to do?”

Cas turns to face her. “Just stand still. I will create sigils on your body that should allow you to stay in control. All you have to do is find Muriel and Cain and let them carry through with their plans.” He tries to give her a smile. It’s pretty un-reassuring - she hadn’t missed that he’d said this _should_ allow her to stay in control.

“Whoa, wait,” Sam says. “Hang on, what are you doing? Stay in control of what?”

Damn. “Israfel,” Mary says as calmly as possible.

Her calmness doesn’t have a noticeable effect. Both Sam and Dean look horrified.

“What? No!”

“You can’t - no, absolutely not -”

“Mom, you don’t know what possession’s like, there is no staying in control, okay?” Sam says, pulling Cas away from her. “Gadreel, _Lucifer_ \- there is no ‘stay in control’! This won’t work!”

“Look, I trust Cas,” Mary tries.

“Well, you shouldn’t!” Dean snaps. “This is the same plan he always comes up with - power up, nuke the bad guys, and then have to be taken down yourself because you’ve turned into a monster. This is the Purgatory souls all over again!”

“I have learned from that,” Cas says. He’s trying to take Mary’s cue and stay calm, but Dean’s words have obviously hurt him. “Dean, I wouldn’t risk someone else that way. Certainly not _Mary.”_

“I don’t care how much you think you’ve learned, Cas!” Dean shouts. “No! I forbid -”

There’s a faint sizzling sound, and he and Sam both go rigid and then collapse.

“We don’t have time for arguing,” Linda says evenly, putting down her taser. “Let’s get moving.”

Mary crouches down to check on them. She’s vaguely aware of Aaoxaif and Gagiel running in from the library, drawn by the chaos, and skidding to a surprised stop when they see what’s going on.

“So, wait,” Charlie says slowly, “your plan is to agree to host Israfel, take her over, and save the world? That’s -”

“Don’t say ‘crazy’, Charlie,” Mary says wretchedly, checking Sam’s pulse. He seems to be okay - physically, at least.

“ - _so badass,”_ Charlie breathes, starry-eyed.

“We’ll take care of these two,” Ellen says, gently detaching Mary from Dean. “You and Cas do your thing.”

“Wait.” Mary pulls the little matchbox car out of her pocket and tucks it into Dean’s. It’s as close as she can get to reassurance while he’s unconscious. She just hopes he remembers what it means when he wakes up. 

Ellen tugs gently on Mary’s arm, and Mary nods shakily and stands. Cas looks just as torn - it’s their plan and they’re both committed to it, but having to steamroller over Sam and Dean to get it done… it leaves a bad taste in Mary’s mouth, and from the anguished way Cas keeps looking over as Ellen organizes the remaining hunters to carry the boys down to the Oz door, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth as well.

Mary reaches out and grabs Cas by the shoulders, physically turning him so he can’t see Sam and Dean any more. It means she’s got a good view of Dean being hoisted over Isaac’s shoulders in a fireman’s carry and the way Sam’s head hangs down as Roy and Gagiel pick him up, but she forces herself to look away.

“Dean was just upset. He didn’t mean it,” Mary says, smiling as much as she can. “I trust you, Cas.”

Cas nods jerkily. “Yes. Very well. This may hurt a little bit, but the pain should pass quickly and there should be no lasting effects.”

“Will it hurt you?” Mary asks. Her mouth is dry and her heart is pounding. She hopes nobody can tell.

Cas gives her a strained smile. “Probably.”

Before she can protest, he leans forward and presses his lips to her forehead.

For a split second there’s nothing, and Mary thinks that the plan is a failure. And then pain races across her skin, like being tattooed everywhere all at once, strong enough and surprising enough that she cries out.

And then it’s over, and she and Cas are collapsing into a heap. Cas is semi-conscious and groggy, but he manages to smile a little when she shakes him and calls his name.

“Holy crap,” Charlie says, staring at her.

Mary looks down. Her arms are covered in intricate black sigils, stretching from the edges of her t-shirt sleeves down nearly to her wrists, and when she raises the hem of her shirt she finds that they cover her torso as well. It might be a trick of the dim light, but every time she glances away and then back again they seem to have moved.

“You will need long sleeves,” Aaoxaif says, busily wrestling an utterly distracted Charlie out of her hoodie. If she has misgivings about the plan or if she’s surprised by Mary’s appearance, she isn’t letting on. “Here. Wear this.”

Mary takes it automatically. “Cas -”

“We’ve got him,” Linda says, helping Ellen get him upright. “What do you need to do?”

Mary forces herself to concentrate. “Go outside. You’ll get him to Oz?”

“Don’t worry,” Ellen says, grinning. “We’ll be fine. Get going.”

Mary nods and gets to her feet. She wants to stay behind and make sure everyone is out of the bunker before she leaves, but they’ve wasted too much time already. 

It’s a little early in the morning for a shopping trip, but she grabs a scrap of paper off the map table and scrawls _eggs, maple syrup, coffee_ on it and makes sure it’s prominently in her hand after she shrugs Charlie’s hoodie on. It’s not much of a cover story for leaving the bunker at this time of day, but it’ll have to do.

God, she hopes Cain’s still lurking nearby. If he isn’t, she’s probably walking straight into Abaddon and her people.

It takes all of her self-control to leave the bunker at a normal pace and conscientiously lock the front door behind her. The back of her neck prickles as if she’s being stared at, and she can only hope it’s Cain and not somebody’s crosshairs making her feel that way. She has no idea how Abaddon’s planning to destroy the bunker or how many demons she’ll bring with her to accomplish it. Mary could be surrounded right now.

She’s halfway across the packed dirt in front of the door when she realises she doesn’t have any car keys. She makes herself keep walking anyway, and tries the car’s door.

Locked. _Damn._ She does not want to walk back into bunker. She _can’t_ \- her keys are all the way downstairs in her room. It will take too long.

She makes a show of patting her pockets and searching for the keys she knows she doesn’t have, desperately trying to buy a little time. There’s a rustle in the bushes behind her that nearly gives her a heart attack, and when she sees Cain running towards her she nearly cries in relief.

Somehow, she manages to keep it off her face. “Cain? What the hell are -”

He tackles her to the ground. Behind them, the bunker detonates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mine is an evil laugh! :D


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Rampant blasphemous fictionalisation of religious traditions. Also, it turns out that Dean may have gotten his potty mouth from Mary, not John.  
> SPOILERS: 7x21 ‘Reading is Fundamental’, 9x11 ‘First Born’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Theology  
> NEW TAGS: Did you know that AO3 has an ‘apocalypse’ tag? I probably should have added it chapters ago!  
> NOTES: This chapter and the next are a little different because, unlike most other chapters, they’re basically two halves of one super-chapter that would have been too long for me to write in one go without becoming an irrational person. This chapter has an actual end, because I may be evil but I’m not, like, _evil_ -evil, but yeah. Call it Part A. :)

Cain tackles her to the ground. Behind them, the bunker detonates.

Even sheltered as she is behind a car and an immortal demon, the force and heat of the blast slam into Mary and she barely has the presence of mind to save her eardrums by covering her ears and opening her mouth. The temperature and pressure are incredible and seem to go on forever, leaving her breathless and dazed.

She pants into the dirt below her, reeling, and it’s not until Cain grabs her arm and starts dragging her to her feet that her brain kicks into gear. She’s not supposed to have been ready for the explosion. And even though she knows - does she really know, it was so fast and Cas was being carried and it’s so far from the atrium to the garage - she _knows_ everyone got out all right and this is all a ruse, she has to react as if she hadn’t.

And then she catches sight of the crater where the bunker used to be, now consumed by roaring flames and surrounded by nightmarishly twisted metal, and instinct boots reason right out the window.

She’s pretty sure she screams. She knows that she elbows Cain hard in the solar plexus and scratches him across the face and bites his arm when he tries to hold her back. She’s vaguely aware of a redheaded figure catching sight of them and hissing “ _You!”_ and then Cain gets a grip on Mary’s forearm with one hand and her hair with the other and everything lurches.

Mary falls to her knees, stunned and disoriented, and only has a second to take in her surroundings - some kind of forest - and then Cain adjusts his grip on her and everything lurches again.

And again.

And again.

By the time they stop for good, Mary’s dizzy and sick and more focused on violently throwing up than on paying attention to where she is. Cain lets go of her and crouches down.

“Are you all right?”

Mary wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and stares at him, only remembering to shift her incredulity into shock at the last moment.

“What - what just happened?” she says instead of _Do I look like I’m fucking all right, asshole?_ She pulls Charlie’s hoodie tightly around her, more to make sure none of Cas’s sigil tattoo things are showing after such a rough trip than for comfort.

“Abaddon destroyed the bunker and nearly you along with it,” Cain says. 

“There were people in that bunker,” Mary says hollowly. It’s not hard to make her eyes fill with tears, to make her memory of Dean and Sam’s unconscious post-taser bodies into something far more permanent and sinister. “My kids were in that bunker.”

“I’m sorry,” Cain says, and does seem to mean it. “Abaddon is always thorough.”

Mary covers her mouth with her hands and hunches over, dragging up her tears from yesterday morning and the ones she hadn’t let herself shed during Deanna’s funeral. The more distraught she seems the better, so she gives herself over entirely - everything she doesn’t let herself think about, everything she glosses over to keep herself together. She thinks about how much of her boys’ lives she’s missed out on and how much they had to survive to get to this point. She thinks about John and herself and how much they’d loved each other and how much they’d hated each other and how little choice they’d had with any of it, and she thinks of the long, hard years as John dragged her children from monster to monster and treated them like soldiers. She thinks of how old Sammy must have been the first time he held a gun and how no one was there to comfort Dean when he was scared. She thinks of how they’ll feel when they wake up to find themselves in Oz without her. 

Cain sighs and helps her to her feet. Through her blurred vision Mary gets a vague impression of a hallway and a bedroom, and then he sits her down on the bed.

“I _am_ sorry,” he says quietly. She hears him step into the hallway and then pause outside the closed door, so she thinks of how Cas looked when she left him lying on the floor of the atrium, barely conscious and probably in pain, and how she can’t be sure that Linda and Ellen and Charlie and Aaoxaif and the others got to the Oz door in time. She imagines Cas waking up in Oz to face Dean and Sam on his own, with no idea if Mary made it past Abaddon or if their plan will work. She thinks of the bunker and all its wonders turned to ash, from the priceless relics on down to the lace doily Cas was so proud of finding for her. She thinks of all the people across the world who are now being subjected to Abaddon’s spite, and how fixing a mess this big could possibly have come down to her.

She doesn’t want to say yes to Israfel. She didn’t want any of this. All she wanted was a home and a family, and all that dream has done is cause disaster and misery.

She can’t even be sure it was her dream in the first place.

Mary cries until her throat aches and her eyes sting, and then she lets herself fall into an exhausted sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

She opens her eyes in the field with no edges, sighs, and waits for Gadreel to show up.

It only takes a moment, and since this time she isn’t looking away, she actually gets to see him arrive. It’s a pretty odd experience - one moment he’s not there and the next he is, and she has a split-second impression of huge shadowy wings stretching away behind him and then, suddenly, it’s as if he’s always been there.

Mary shakes her head to clear it, and Gadreel frowns at her.

“Are you all right? There’s something different about you.”

_The tattoos._ Mary fights the instinct to check Charlie’s hoodie - nothing says guilty and suspicious like defensive body language - and forces her brain to switch tracks from ‘traumatised grieving mother’ to ‘commander’. “It’s been a day. Have you had any luck?”

Gadreel takes a step forward, and his expression abruptly clears. “Ah. You’re dehydrated.” He reaches out and taps her forehead with two fingers.

Nothing seems to happen except Mary eyeballing him for it, but he looks satisfied. “We have made some progress, Mary. You were right to think that the souls in Heaven would be a valuable resource.”

Mary nods, taking a casual half-step back in case he wants to do the tapping thing again. “That’s great. What have you found out?”

Gadreel glances around and lowers his voice. “We think he is using the angel tablet. As the Scribe, he would be able to channel its power in a way others cannot.”

“Can we work with that?” Mary asks, feeling a tentative measure of hope. It doesn’t solve their larger problems, i.e. the rapidly-becoming-global virus apocalypse, but removing Metatron’s ability to screw with them would at least take one worry off the table.

“If I can discover where it is kept, destroying it should break his hold over Heaven’s power,” Gadreel says. He looks half excited and half sick with anxiety, and given he’s still an angel that says something pretty powerful about the emotions he’s actually feeling.

Mary sucks in a breath. “Do you think that would repower the angels?” Forget taking a worry off the table - that would be _huge_. Sure, they’d probably wind up dealing with the Bartholomew-Malachi grudge match again, but they’d also be able to power the cleansing spell. Right now she’s willing to take the lesser of two evils.

Gadreel’s face falls. “No. He would have to actively reverse it before we destroyed the tablet.”

Disappointing, but not unexpected. “He’s hardly going to do _that_ willingly.”

“Do you want me to try and force him?” Gadreel asks cautiously.

Mary pauses. It’s clearly not something Gadreel _wants_ to do, but he might be _able_ to do it. Unfortunately, it would also show their hand in a pretty big way, and if Gadreel fails Metatron will know exactly who to target next. “No. Just find it and destroy it.”

Gadreel nods. “I understand. Do you have further questions for me?”

Mary hesitates. “Are you… without going and looking or, or doing anything to alert Metatron, are you able to tell if an angel is dead or alive?”

Gadreel tilts his head. “The majority of them no longer have their Graces.”

“Right,” Mary says. “No, yeah, of course. Never mind.” It was a dangerous thing to ask, anyway. It might have eased her mind about Cas’s safety, but it also would have brought him to Gadreel’s attention.

Gadreel nods and raises his hand. “Very well. Would you like to wake or sleep?”

“Sleep,” Mary says immediately. If she has to go from this straight back into full-on pretend grief with no downtime in between she’s going to give herself whiplash.

“Sleep well, then,” Gadreel says, and touches her forehead.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary wakes slowly some time later, her throat sore and her eyes gritty, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. The room around her is dusty and the wallpaper is peeling off, but it was clearly a nice place at some point.

Muriel’s sitting on the foot of the bed, looking small and fragile. There are dark shadows under her eyes and her hair is ragged and unkempt.

Mary pushes herself into a sitting position. Given the amount of crying she’d done before falling asleep, she would have expected to feel a lot worse off than she does. Gadreel must have fixed her dehydration with that touch in the dreamscape. She’s glad for it, not only because she hates headaches but because given the nature of her surroundings she kind of doubts this place has drinkable water.

“I would have spared you this pain if I could, Mary,” Muriel says sadly. She presses her hand against her chest. “I thought it hurt before, when I had been cast out, but it was nothing. How do you stand it? How do humans survive this?”

She looks so pitiful sitting there that even with the stakes being as high as they are Mary has to fight the instinct to comfort her. The destruction of the bunker does give Mary a good reason to say yes to Israfel, but the first rule of any good con is to convince the mark come to you. Muriel has to feel like she’s still selling Mary on this plan for it to seem genuine.

Crap. That’s assuming Muriel can even still raise Israfel with her Grace gone. Mary feels an icy finger of adrenaline flood down her spine. How could they not have thought of that? That’s _basic_. Sure, Cas had seemed certain after Joshua slit his throat that he’d still be able to make the plan work, but he’d been thinking about powering the sigil drawings on Mary, not raising Israfel. They don’t even know how that’s supposed to be _done_.

Oh, _fuck._

Muriel doesn’t seem to notice Mary’s panic. “There is nothing left. No hope. No sanctuary.”

“That’s not what you used to say,” Mary says hoarsely, mind spinning. 

“Oh, I stand by what I said before,” Muriel says calmly. “God has left. Only Israfel has the power to bring an end to this.”

Mary can’t look interested, so she looks away dismissively instead. As she’d hoped, Muriel takes this as a challenge and leans forward. “You think it cannot be done now that we have been reduced to this? You are wrong. There is but one path before us, and it is still open, even in our limited state. If you had doubts before this must prove to you that it was His plan from the beginning.” 

Jesus. Well, that’s a relief, even if the fanatical light in Muriel’s eyes is fairly upsetting.

Muriel pats her on the knee and stands. “I am not one of the archangels, Mary. I will not force you and I will not manipulate you. You have heard my thoughts. I will leave you to yours and return later.” She pauses by the door and says, half to herself, “It won’t hurt any more if you agree, though.”

Damn. Mary doesn’t want to feel bad for deceiving Muriel. She _shouldn’t_ feel bad - Muriel does, after all, want to destroy the world.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for someone who’s terrified and hurting and just wants the pain to stop, though. Mary can’t help but wonder if now that they’re physically in the same place there isn’t some way she can _help_ Muriel - show her some of the good things in this world, help her to see the wonders, introduce her to people who will make her feel safe and protected. There was never time, before, and Mary was too worried about accidentally letting Muriel into her head, but maybe now...

The world’s going down in flames, though, thanks to Abaddon, and the only shot they’ve got left is Israfel, and for Israfel they need Muriel. 

Mary sighs and rests her forehead on her knees.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary figures that Muriel will probably give her an hour or so to think, and even though she chafes at the delay and has to very deliberately not think about how far the virus might be spreading during that time with no one to check it, it’s important to sell her conversion to the plan and that means following Muriel’s lead. If Muriel expects Mary to need time to think before she decides, then Mary needs time to think before she decides.

She curls up on the bed with her back to the door, because even though she doesn’t like leaving herself unprotected it means that she’ll have a few extra seconds to school her expression if someone comes in unexpectedly.

She’ll need those few extra seconds, too, because instead of thinking about the glorious possibility of Israfel’s return, Mary’s mostly worrying. She runs through the route from the atrium to the garage dozens of times, calculating how long it would take to go from the atrium to the library, the library down the stairs, from the stairs across the garage. How long it would take half-carrying a mostly unconscious ex-angel. How long it would take if somebody tripped, or Cas passed out completely, or had a seizure…

When she can’t think about that any more, she times her own trip from the map table out to the car and tries to figure out how long it had been between when she left to when the bunker blew. Sometimes she comes up short and knows that Cas and the others are dead. Sometimes she comes up long and knows they must have made it.

When she starts imagining that Dean and Sam regained consciousness just in time to run back through the Oz door into the bunker as it exploded, she knows she’s got to stop. If she lets herself keep thinking she’s going to convince herself that everyone really _is_ dead, and she’ll be in no shape to handle Israfel when the time comes.

Just thinking about Israfel makes her shudder. Cas seems sure that the sigils will let Mary stay in control, and Sam had seemed just as sure that control was impossible. On the one hand, Cas does know more than any of them about angels and would do his utmost not to put her at risk. On the other, Sam has been possessed by not one but two angels, neither of which were as powerful as Israfel. Theoretical experience versus practical.

Mary’s not even sure what having that kind of power under her control would look like. Angels are so far removed from humans, culturally and mentally, and at least in theory Israfel has absolutely no experience with humans. Cas had said Israfel was used as one of the building blocks of the world. Was that pre-humans? Israfel might not even know _what_ Mary is, let alone who.

And what is Mary even going to do with that power? What _can_ she do? Cure the virus, of course that’s first on the list, but _how_ \- does she just need to concentrate really hard, or is there something more structured she needs to do? Should she also try to put the angels back in Heaven and close it? Muriel said that Israfel created the angels, so in theory Israfel should be able to alter them. But is it right for Mary to make a decision like that without consulting them? Her biggest interest is protecting her people and her home, and having the angels messing around has really done more bad than good, even if she has come to count several of them as friends and allies. She’s probably justified in trying to send them away. 

Too bad ‘justified’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘right’. If she does close Heaven, what will happen to Cas? Cas is one of hers, but he’s also Heaven’s, for all that they’ve never seemed to appreciate him. She’s 100% sure that he’d be better off human and on Earth, but she’ll be no better than anyone else on the lengthy list of people who have screwed around with him if she doesn’t find a way to let him choose for himself.

He might choose Heaven. They’re his family and he’s known them for billions of years. He might very well choose to leave. 

It’s his choice. It would be okay if he chose them. It _would_.

_God._ Where the hell is Muriel? If she has to sit here and think for much longer she’s going to go crazy.

By the time Muriel finally returns nearly two hours later, Mary’s pretty sure she’s starting to look a little unhinged. Muriel doesn’t seem to notice, though - she’s carrying a rucksack and closely followed by Cain.

“Abaddon has found us,” Cain says curtly, and grabs them both.

They make four jumps this time, and Mary manages to keep from throwing up mostly because there’s nothing in her stomach _to_ throw up. Even Muriel looks nauseous when they finally stop.

“She’s getting closer every time,” Cain says, frowning. They’ve landed in another abandoned house, even shabbier than the last, and he’s staring at the walls in a way that strongly suggests he can see straight through them.

“You can’t take her?” Mary asks thickly, still trying to convince everything to stop spinning.

“Not without collateral damage,” Cain says, giving her and Muriel a pointed look.

Fair enough. Mary nods her understanding and struggles to her feet, leaning heavily on the wall behind her. She’d rather not - it feels slightly sticky against her hand, which is disgusting.

“Mary,” Muriel says, making the same unsteady trip to verticality. “We may not have much more time left. I am sorry to rush you but we have no choice. Will you save us?”

Mary’s thought a lot about what her response should be. She’s tried out everything in her head from angry to heartbroken, and in the end she goes with all of it.

“Yes,” she says, and makes sure to catch both their eyes. “There’s nothing left for me here. I want to destroy it all.”

Muriel looks a little unsettled by the second half of this statement and Cain by the first, but they both nod. They’re getting what they want, after all - the mental state of the person who will give it to them is ultimately immaterial, for all that they did make a token effort to let her come to the decision on her own.

Muriel breathes out in relief and makes an odd, fluttery gesture, like her human instincts are telling her to hug Mary and her angel brain doesn‘t know what the hell to do with that, and then she begins digging through her rucksack.

“We will need to prepare. There is a brief ritual and a strengthening potion that must be consumed, and then you can pray to Israfel and offer yourself. For the prayer we have a destination we must reach, but we can do the rest anywhere. Cain, does this location suit you until then?”

Cain does another one of his thousand-yard-stares. “It’s fine for now.”

Muriel nods and begins setting up her supplies. Mary watches her for a moment and then sits down with her back against the wall, trying hard not to think about how filthy she’s probably getting Charlie’s hoodie. 

“Didn’t you used to have…” Mary waves a hand, “...minions? I know I’ve met people who were working for you. Why is it just you and Cain now?”

Muriel’s hands slow a little and her shoulders slump. “Some we have lost. Some were in too much pain to help us.”

Mary winces. She’d known that the angels without human companions had taken the depowering harder than others, but she hasn’t had the time or the emotional energy to spare for thinking about just what that actually means. “How’s it working, an angel and a demon?”

Muriel nods without looking up. “It was difficult when I still had my Grace. His very being repulsed me. Now that I am - now that I don’t - I can be in the same room as him, now, which has made things easier.” She glances up at Mary. “I appreciate that this partnership looks strange, even blasphemous, from the outside. But if God is not here to protect us, and we are both working to further His plan in His absence, doesn’t that make it just?”

Mary shrugs. The real her disagrees, and the grieving and angry her that she’s pretending to be wouldn’t care. “I think that kind of thing’s above my pay grade.”

“It depends on your interpretation of Man’s role in the divine hierarchy, I suppose,” Muriel says wearily, as if she’s reciting the opening line of a debate she’s been having for millennia. “Mary, I apologize, but I must concentrate on this.”

“Sure,” Mary says, obligingly falling silent. It’s a good idea to gather whatever scraps of intel she can get without breaking character, but she’s wary of making any kind of connection with Muriel that will make betraying her any harder. There’s no question in Mary’s mind that she’s doing the right thing, and the thing that must be done, but that doesn’t mean she can’t worry about the collateral damage it’ll cause.

She spends the time putting her hair back into a tidy braid and watching Cain walk his perimeter. She understands why he’s doing this - from what she remembers of Christian mythology he’s been doomed to walk the Earth ever since killing his brother, and from what she saw of him in that farmhouse in Missouri when he tried to get Dean to take the Mark he’s past tired of it. It’s not a particularly complicated equation.

It doesn’t give her a very stable framework from which to anticipate his reaction to her plan, though. She can guess that he’ll be angry, maybe crushed, but she doesn’t know if he’ll react with physical violence or apathy. She’s willing to bet that the Blade can kill an angel, especially one housed in a fragile human vessel, although whether it can kill an angel like Israfel is another matter entirely. 

She ties off her braid and stands up, wandering over to where Cain stands by the window peering out through what remains of the curtains. Mary gets a brief glimpse of something that looks like desert, and then Cain lets the ragged fabric fall shut. He turns and walks into the next room, and after a moment Mary follows him.

“Muriel said I was distracting her,” she says when he gives her a questioning look.

He nods, accepting this. “I’m sorry it took this to bring you to us.”

Mary looks away, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She stares at the floor for a moment, running through strategies in her mind. “Do you think you’ll see your brother after all this?”

“No. Israfel brings the end of everything.” He looks away. “Even if there were still to be an afterlife, Abel is in Heaven and I am bound for Hell. We would have no contact.”

“Do you miss him?” Mary asks, genuinely curious. She’s heard a number of theories about why Cain killed him; the most popular is jealousy over God’ favor, but there’s one about a woman they fought over who might have also been Cain’s sister, and even one about Cain making a deal to take Abel’s place in Hell and send him to Heaven instead.

“I would like to see him again,” Cain says neutrally. “I’m not sure what I would do if I did, but I’d like to find out. I’m not sure what he would do, either.” He shifts, frowning. “You’re very curious about my brother.” He gives her a narrow-eyed look. “Do you hope to see your children?”

He obviously means it to hurt, to slap her down after prying, so Mary flinches and half-turns away. “If I can’t see them, then I don’t want there to be anything,” she says, and the conversation lapses into silence.

Mary spends the next several minutes trying to figure out what avenue of questioning she can take from here that will be informative but not suspicious, and before she can come up with anything Muriel calls them in from the next room. She’s finished chalking a circle of sigils on the floor and has a dubious-looking concoction in a mug for Mary to drink.

Mary finds she’s very glad she already finished braiding her hair, because her hands are starting to shake a little with nerves. She takes a calming breath - which unfortunately means she also gets a whiff of the potion - and downs it.

It’s glutinous and cold and horrible, and there’s a long moment in which she’s sure she’s not going to be able to keep it down. Muriel and Cain watch her carefully until it’s clear that she’s mastered her gag reflex.

“Please stand in the circle now, Mary.”

Mary does as she’s told. The potion doesn’t seem to be doing much to her physically, which is a relief - she’s got enough to worry about already without hallucinations or problems concentrating as well. She feels flushed and her heart is beating a little faster, but that’s it, and both of those things could be attributed to nervousness just as much as anything else. 

She stands in the exact center of the circle and waits patiently while Muriel chants and burns something in a large brass bowl. For several minutes nothing really seems to happen, and Mary’s just starting to lose her jitters to boredom when Muriel’s voice rises and there’s a bright Grace-blue flash of light from the sigils.

Mary feels an intense tingle pass all over her, like radio static but on her skin, concentrated on where the tattoos are hidden beneath her shirt. She cries out in surprise, and then the moment is over.

“My apologies,” Muriel says. “I should have warned you that it might feel odd.”

Mary nods and forces herself not to check the tattoos. If Muriel hadn’t noticed anything untoward during the spell then they should be fine, right? Besides, it’s not like Mary would be able to tell if they were different anyway. Or fix them if they were damaged somehow.

God. This is such a terrible plan.

“Cain? We should leave for the site soon, please.”

Mary breathes and forces her panic back. It’s probably okay to look a little nervous, but she shouldn’t go too overboard. She’s supposed to be looking forward to this, not fighting the instinct to run and hide.

Cain nods and takes hold of them both again, and Mary braces herself for travel. They only make one jump this time, probably because Abaddon isn’t trying to follow them. Mary’s just glad she doesn’t have to deal with the awful, dizzying, dislocated feeling any more than she has to. 

When the world solidifies around her, she finds herself staring out over a slightly scrubby field. Off in the distance she can see a two-lane road with cracked asphalt stretching from one horizon to the other in a straight line. It’s the kind of terrain she’s seen all her life, from going on trips with her parents right up until her recent travels with Cas.

This particular field and road do look awfully familiar, though.

Behind her, Muriel gasps in dismay. “Cain! Was it Abaddon?”

Mary turns, and finds herself caught between gasping and laughing outright, because they’re standing next to the warehouse where this whole thing started all that time ago, where Muriel’s followers resurrected her and Cas intervened, and where later they had managed to resurrect all the other hunters, including Deanna.

Of course they are. Mary doesn’t know why she didn’t see this coming.

The warehouse is looking pretty rough, though - someone has set it on fire in the last few weeks, and it’s since collapsed almost completely. Only the double front doors and a bit of the corner are still standing, and the rest is pretty much rubble. Mary can understand why Muriel immediately suspected that Abaddon was behind it, but she’s willing to bet it was actually just Jody or Missouri cleaning up loose ends before someone else could come by and make use of the residual mojo.

Sure enough, Cain frowns, raking the surrounding area with a hard stare. “No,” he says slowly. “This was human mischief. Do we need to clear any of the debris?”

Muriel’s body language settles a little bit. “No. It would help if Mary made her way as close as possible, but we don’t need to be in the same spot. We can proceed.”

Oh, well. At least Jody and Missouri’s sabotage is preventing Muriel and Cain from seeing the alterations they’d done to the original spell. It would probably raise a few eyebrows.

“There’s something…” Cain takes a few steps away from them, scanning the ground at the edge of the field. “What is that?” He makes that shrugging motion and brings the Blade out of whatever dimensional pocket it usually hides in, and then makes a complicated gesture with it in the air.

Nothing happens. Cain scowls and does it again, leaving a smoky heat-wave shimmer behind this time, and then slashes up in one swift movement.

The air seems to rip down the middle and crumble away. Behind it is Abaddon.

“Surprise,” she says, grinning. “You caught on faster than I thought you would. Good job, old man.”

In the field behind Abaddon Mary can now see figures moving towards them from the road - demons and Croats, abandoning their stealth and starting to run as soon as they see that they’ve been discovered. 

“You followed the spell,” Cain says. He hasn’t moved a muscle that Mary can see, but he suddenly seems to radiate danger and violence.

“It wasn’t exactly _hard,”_ Abaddon says, and lunges before Mary even catches sight of the blade in her hand.

Mary shoves Muriel behind her and pulls out her gun and her angel sword. They’re about ten feet from the remains of the warehouse. It won’t provide them with much cover, but the doors are still standing and they can at least put their backs to it -

Muriel screams in terror and clutches at Mary’s hoodie. “Mary! Pray for Israfel!”

“I don’t know what to say!” Mary snaps, kneecapping the lead demon. Ordinary bullets won’t kill demons, not even the watered-down demons that remain behind after Hell’s closing, but any demon would have to stop and repair a shattered knee before it could keep walking. Too bad she has a limited number of shots and a rapidly expanding choice of targets.

“Say anything!” Muriel wails. “It doesn’t matter what you say, just that you mean it!”

Shit fuck _goddamn_. Mary shoves the handle of her angel sword into one of Muriel’s hands and her gun into the other, and snaps, “Buy me time!”

Muriel takes two terrified steps away, gun and sword held up like a shield in front of her instead of pointed at the enemy, and Mary turns and sprints for the warehouse. She scrambles up a fallen section of wall, ripping her jeans on a jagged piece of rebar and coating herself liberally with soot in the process, and braces herself against a fallen I-beam. It’s closer to being above where she first found Cas than it is to where she woke up, but it will have to do. Everywhere else is too unstable to get to quickly.

Below her, the flood of demons and Croats parts around Cain and Abaddon and continues on towards Muriel, who is standing alone and exposed in the driveway, sobbing with terror.

Mary closes her eyes.

_I pray to the angel Israfel,_ she thinks as hard and as fast as she can. _I offer myself as a vessel, now get your ass down here!_

For a moment there’s a distant sense of surprise, and then the universe slams into Mary’s mind.

She’s overwhelmed in an eyeblink, blind and deaf and reeling and compressed down so quickly her brain can’t even process it. The tiny fragment of her that’s left huddles, shaking, only kept from oblivion by a gossamer-thin net of awareness. Against the brain-breaking vastness of the mind that has so utterly subsumed her own the net feel safe, warm, and she clings to it. It’s… familiar. It’s...

_Cas,_ the tiny scrap of her consciousness thinks, and the awful pressure eases a fraction.

_Cas,_ she thinks again, and this time it comes with a memory: a kiss on the forehead, and sigils on her arms.

Yes. That’s right.

She’s Mary. She’s trying to save the world. 

_I’m Mary,_ she thinks, and there’s enough room to move. 

_I’m Mary. I’m Mary, I’m Mary, I’m Mary!_ She throws her name out, kicking past the unimaginably huge consciousness holding her down, creating her own little pocket of awareness. _I’m Mary and this is_ my _damn body!_

She can see now, she can feel and hear. She’s sitting on the ruins of the warehouse, still looking down at the battle below. Abaddon lunges for Cain, snarling, and Muriel is turning towards Mary, expression hopeful and then tinged with dawning horror.

Mary looks down at herself. Cas’s sigils emerge from her sleeves now, down over her hands and twining around her fingers. They’re glowing, Grace-bright, strongly enough to show through the fabric of her jeans and Charlie’s hoodie.

Around her, the impending battle slows and freezes in place.

**Explain,** Israfel says.

The voice booms and cracks, reverberating through her chest cavity like a thunderclap. Mary flinches and feels blood trickle down her upper lip from her nose.

**Explain,** Israfel says again, a little bit quieter.

“Um,” Mary says. There’s a Croat about a foot away from Muriel, one hand outstretched, its fingers hooked into claws. There’s no way Muriel will turn in time to see it and there’s no way Mary will be able to get to her in time to help. “I’m Mary. It’s, uh, nice to meet you.”

Inasmuch as a being as alien and _huge_ as Israfel can even have emotions the way humans understand them, she seems bemused. **Explain the sigils.**

“Oh.” Right. Of course. “A, a friend of mine made those for me, so I could… stay. In control.” She doesn’t think for an instant she’s in control right now, though. She may have been able to fight her way to consciousness, but she can feel Israfel all around her like a storm waiting to break. The very idea that Mary could _control_ her is laughable. It would be like trying to keep the tide from coming in by telling it to go to its room and think about what it’s done. “Sorry.”

Mary’s hand rises in front of her eyes without her say-so, turning back and forth to display the sigils. Israfel uses Mary’s hands to take off the hoodie and inspect her arms too.

**These are new,** Israfel says slowly, turning her inspection to Mary’s stomach. **Name the creator.**

“Well, you might know him, actually,” Mary says, and if she could cross her fingers she’d be doing it. She really hopes this isn’t painting a target on Cas’s back. “He’s an angel, or used to be. Castiel?”

**Castiel!** Israfel says, letting Mary’s shirt fall back into place. She almost sounds pleased. **Yes. I remember Castiel.**

“We were hoping you’d be able to help us with something,” Mary says cautiously.

**Untruth.**

Mary winces. “Okay. That’s fair. We were hoping to be able to, um, use your power. To fix some things.”

She feels Israfel’s attention focus outward, and in a breathless second that makes her head pound and her eyeballs ache she’s looked at what must have been the entire Earth - the untouched parts, of which there are fewer than Mary had hoped, and the demons, the virus, and the people huddling in fortified towns.

**And yet the Father did not summon me for the Death Song.**

“No. He’s… away,” Mary agrees. “Look, Israfel, here’s the thing - it’s not time for the Death Song. We’re not dead yet.”

**The virus is a harbinger of the End.**

“Okay, but it’s not the end yet,” Mary insists. “Look at my life, okay? Look through my brain.”

In retrospect, she maybe should have phrased that differently, or at least thought it through a little more. Israfel rifles through Mary’s memories in one quick, brutal swipe, plunging her through childhood and into adulthood, the good as well as the bad. Mary sees her children born and her parents die, her arguments with John and the first time Dean held his little brother. She sees her own resurrection and everything that’s happened since then in a dizzying, bewildering burst.

**You fight,** Israfel says, lingering on Mary’s memory of them all sitting around the library table in the bunker, eating sandwiches and arguing about research materials. 

“It’s our lives, of course we fight,” Mary says. “We just have a couple of things we need to fix, with your help.”

**I do not fix,** Israfel says. **I create or I destroy.** She doesn’t sound angry or upset about it - it’s just a fact. The sun is bright. The sky is blue. I create or I destroy.

“That’s all you’ve done _yet,”_ Mary corrects.

She can feel thoughts as huge as galaxies turning over. **Explain.**

“I mean that you can do something different now,” Mary says. She can feel Israfel all around her, blankly polite and uncomprehending. “You could choose something different.”

Israfel pauses for a long moment. **I sang the angels to life and I will sing them to death. Izra’il exhaled life into the living things and when I sing Izra’il will inhale again. Jibreel gave awareness and Jibreel will take it away. Mikhail built a place for everything to stand upon and Mikhail will let everything fall.**

“Okay,” Mary says slowly. “Let’s try something a little different. You said you remembered Castiel, right? You sounded… fond of him?”

**Yes.**

“Why?” Mary asks. “Why does he stick in your head?”

**Of all that I Created,** Israfel says, and this time there’s no mistaking the warmth in her voice, **only Castiel had a hand in Creating himself. I turned aside for an instant, and when I turned back, there he was.**

Mary sucks in a breath, momentarily stunned by a warm rush of affection. Of course Cas had helped to create himself. He must have been so curious about it.

“So be like Castiel,” she says. “Help me fix things. Instead of singing the angels to death, sing them to life again. They can help us heal everyone infected by the virus, and then they can go home.” She hesitates for a second, and then plunges on. “Can you seal them into Heaven?”

There’s another dizzying rush of vision and suddenly, in a way that Mary’s brain strains to understand, she can _see Heaven_. Well, not Heaven itself, exactly, and not really _see_ , but she can… understand the structure of it. She can see how it’s supposed to be, and she can see the unnatural constraints Metatron has bound it with. She can see the souls crowded shivering around Heaven’s blocked entrances, and she can see the sickly pulsing rot of the spell keeping the angels’ Graces contained.

**Angels are angels,** Israfel says, sickened. Mary feels their attention swoop back down, and now she can see Muriel - the raw wound where her Grace was torn out, the void where her wings used to be. **Angels are meant to be angels!**

They swoop again, through space and something Mary’s pretty sure is actual physical time, and she can see Cas and the boys, alive and apparently unharmed. They’re in a large room full of people, hunters and civilians and a couple of others with a green tinge that Mary’s pretty sure marks them as people from Oz. Mary can see a tangle of anger and betrayal sitting heavily between Cas and Dean and Sam, although it’s overlaid with a tentative, fragile layer of grudging forgiveness. Even as she watches, Dean hands Cas a plate of food with a watchful look.

Cas stiffens and drops the plate. “Mary?” He turns and looks straight at them.

Before Mary can respond, Israfel pulls them back to the warehouse with a snap. 

**Castiel created himself,** Israfel says thoughtfully.

“Will you help us?” Mary asks.

**I will sing the angels back to life,** Israfel agrees. **I will allow them to work and I will send them home. Yes. That is just. I consent.**

A warm rush of relief washes over Mary. “Thank you, Israfel.”

**It will take time.**

“That’s okay,” Mary says cautiously. “You stopped time, right? That’s why everyone’s frozen? We’ve got all the time we need.”

**I can stop time,** Israfel agrees. **Or I can sing the angels to life, or I can repair Heaven. I can do one thing and then I can do the next thing.**

“Right,” Mary sighs. Of course it was too good to be true. “So how much time are we talking about? Minutes?” She braces herself. “...Years?”

**Minutes,** Israfel says, amused. **Many minutes, but not years.**

Well, that’s less precise than Mary had been hoping for, but she supposes that an immortal insanely powerful angel who helped create the world and then went dormant billions of years ago probably only has a casual relationship with mortal time scales.

**An army could hold back the creatures while I work,** Israfel suggests.

Mary winces. She does, in fact, technically have an army, but she really would have preferred that they stay safely in Oz until all the craziness was over. Israfel’s right, though - they need protection while they work, and Mary can’t see any way around it.

“Well, good thing the warehouse doors are still standing, I guess,” she sighs. “We’ll have to call the army in from Oz. Can you, I dunno, connect me to Cas or something?”

Another swoop, and Mary’s suddenly back in Oz next to Cas. He jolts as if he’s been electrocuted and turns to stare at her.

Mary stares back. She knows she needs to tell Cas what’s going on and fill him in on the plan, but with Israfel’s mojo Cas is _fascinating_. She can see the scars left behind from when Metatron took his Grace, somehow darker and more sinister than the ones left on Muriel, and the faint traces of corruption from his stolen power. Beneath all of that she can see _him_ , stormclouds and wonder and the ghostly shadow of wings...

“Mary?” Cas says.

Dean and Sam have straightened up too, although only Sam tries to follow Cas’s eyeline and see her as well. Dean gives Cas a wary look. “Cas? You with us?”

“Yeah, sorry for staring, Cas,” Mary says, feeling a little manic. “I’m just glad you’re okay. So, the plan worked, woohoo! Slight hiccup, though - we’re kind of surrounded by Abaddon’s demon army and a crapton of Croats, and Israfel says she can’t stop time _and_ fix everything else, so we need some bodyguards. Know any?”

Cas blinks. “No? But there are plenty of people here who would probably be able to help.”

“Cas, buddy, I need you to fill me in, here,” Dean says. With Israfel’s senses, Mary can tell that he’s remembering Cas in white hospital scrubs and then there’s something about bees, but it seems invasive to concentrate on it so she tries to ignore it instead.

“Sorry, I was being kind of metaphorical,” Mary says. “I didn’t mean actual professional bodyguards, I meant hunters.”

“Oh.” Cas’s expression clears. “Yes. I understand. We can be ready in minutes if Dean gives the word. Is there a door near you?”

“Whoa, whoa!” Dean says, getting up in Cas’s space and trying to get his attention. “Cas, we’re not attacking anything until you back up the crazy truck and stop talking to thin air.”

Sam approaches too, but he’s focused on the empty spot where Mary’s standing. “Cas, is Mom here?”

“Yeah, we’re by the warehouse where I met you,” Mary says. “Tell Sam I’ve got an army man with his name on it.” It will mean more to Dean than Sam, unless Dean filled him in on the significance of the matchbox car in his own pocket, but it’s the best password she can think of.

“Mary says she has an army man with Sam’s name on it,” Cas repeats dutifully.

“Wow,” Sam says, giving the spot slightly to Mary’s left a wide-eyed look.

Dean rubs his forehead and gives a half-hysterical burst of laughter. “Ohhh, man…”

“Dean, are you all right?” Cas asks before Mary can do it herself.

“Yeah, fine,” Dean says, shaking his head. “Just, just waltz back into the apocalypse because your invisible friend asks us to. Well, it’s Thursday, why not, right?” 

“You don’t think he’s really talking to Mom?” Sam asks, giving Cas a concerned look.

“No, he is, and I’m glad she’s okay. I’m just having a moment,” Dean says wearily, and then turns to the rest of the room and raises his voice. “Gear up, everybody! Grab your weapons! We’re back in the fight and we are leaving _now!”_

Israfel pulls Mary back before she can say goodbye or tell them to be careful, and as the field by the warehouse settles back in around her she has to swallow around a lump in her throat.

**They will be adequate. But you worry?** Israfel asks curiously.

“I worry for the safety of those in the army,” Mary explains, forcing herself to concentrate.

**Fear not,** Israfel says soothingly. **It is the nature of the world to require a sacrifice for great acts. Your sacrifice will be worthy.**

“ _No,”_ Mary says sharply. “No sacrifice! We’ve already sacrificed, okay? I’m going to survive, and my kids are going to survive, and my friends are going to survive. This is a _fight_. Understand?”

**No,** Israfel says calmly, **but I will help regardless. I am prepared.**

“Okay. Thanks, Israfel.” Mary takes a deep breath and braces herself, holding the sequence of events in her mind: Restart time. Bring the army. Repower the angels. Cure the virus. Close Heaven.

No problem. _Holy crap._

“You think they’re ready yet?”

There’s no swoop this time, just a brief snatch of Dorothy’s voice saying _\- how will we know when -_ and then Israfel pulls them back.

**They wait. I am prepared.**

Great. Mary’s not, but whatever. She takes a deep breath.

**”NOW, CAS!”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so maybe it’s only kind of an actual end and it turns out that I am a little bit _evil_ -evil. My bad?


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Violence. Some blood. Some eldritch abomination-type creature descriptions (not graphic).  
> SPOILERS: None.  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: The history of Super Soakers  
> NEW TAGS: None.  
> NOTES: I’m really sorry it took so long to get this chapter out! Work continues to be insane. (Damn capitalism.) I have highly optimistic hopes that the epilogue won’t take as long.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

**Hail Mary**  
 _1._ a prayer for intercession, also known as the Angelic Salutation  
 _2._ a desperate, last-ditch attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“You think the army’s ready yet?” Mary asks.

There’s no sense of movement this time as Israfel’s attention switches, just a brief feeling of vertigo and a snatch of Dorothy’s voice saying _\- how will we know when -_ before Israfel pulls them back and Mary’s once again staring down at the frozen tableau of Abaddon and Cain and the demon-Croat mob bearing down on Muriel.

**They wait. I am prepared.**

Great. Mary’s not, and is strongly considering having some old-fashioned hysterics once she has time, but whatever. 

She takes a deep breath, trying very hard not to think too much about the kind of danger she’s about to drop everyone she loves and cares about into, and musters her strength.

**”NOW, CAS!”**

Israfel waits until they can feel Oz connect to the warehouse door, and then releases her hold on time. Mary watches, heart in her mouth, as Abaddon suddenly completes her lunge towards Cain and Muriel’s horrified expression solidifies.

The Croat behind her also continues moving. Before she can think it through, Mary screams **“Muriel, drop!”**

Maybe it’s the added power from Israfel, but Muriel’s legs fold up under her like she’s been taken out at the knees, and the Croat’s grasping hand passes through the air a scant inch above her head as she collapses. In the next instant the warehouse doors slam open and the Free Will Army begins pouring in from Oz.

Someone takes out the Croat with a rifle butt to the head, and the front lines of the army start pushing the demons and the infected ones back. They may have only been given a moment to plan, but they’ve thought this out well - behind the first wave of hunters is a small group of others led by Sam and Aaoxaif who immediately crouch down and begin putting up wards and barricades, establishing an area of relative safety by the warehouse doors. 

“Israfel, get started on the Grace,” Mary says. The arrival of the hunters has made Abaddon’s forces pull back a bit, but there’s still a gap between the barricades they’ve put up and the bottom of the rubble Mary’s perched on, and Muriel’s sitting right in the middle of it. There’s a faint shimmer to the air which makes Mary think Israfel’s got the two of them shielded, at least, but it wouldn’t be practical to extend it all the way to Muriel.

Mary raises her voice. “Muriel, honey, come towards me.”

For a moment Mary thinks Muriel’s too far in shock to move, but then she stumbles to her feet and starts making her way up the fallen section of wall, dragging Mary’s gun and angel sword behind her. Mary smiles at her encouragingly and holds out her hand, but Muriel stops just out of reach and huddles against the debris. She’s mostly within the shimmer now, so Mary doesn’t try to push.

“What did you do?” Muriel whispers, starting to cry.

“I changed the plan,” Mary says. “I’m sorry, kiddo. Stay here with me, okay? I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

In the back of her head she can feel Israfel reaching out to the spell holding the angels’ Graces captive, and resists the urge to ask her to hurry it up. Connected as they are, she knows that Israfel’s working as fast as she can.

**The Scribe made this,** Israfel says, studying it. Mary can see what she means - in amongst the tendrils of power holding the Graces in place, there is a sense of smugly vindictive superiority. Given what she’s heard of him, it practically screams ‘Metatron’. 

“Can you break it?” Mary asks. She’s dividing her attention between watching Israfel and trying to spot Dean and Sam and Cas in the melee by the warehouse doors. She sees Ellen and Jo fighting back-to-back, and catches a glimpse of Linda spraying a demon full in the face with what must be a water pistol loaded with holy water, but there’s too much chaos to pick out many details. She hopes Sam’s still behind the barricades with Aaoxaif, although it’s probably overly optimistic to think that Dean and Cas will stay there with him instead of heading directly for the thick of the fighting.

**This was made with the Word of God,** Israfel says.

Mary’s heart sinks. “So that’s a no?” Shit. “Okay, Gadreel’s supposed to be looking for the angel tablet, maybe -”

**First God spoke the Word,** Israfel intones, **and Creation began. It was not until later that the Word was written. I am older than this Word.**

Mary feels Israfel reach out and take hold of the spell surrounding the Graces, twining in amongst the strands of it. There’s a sense of great effort that makes the world narrow down around them both, and for an instant Mary can’t see or hear the battle around them, and then the spell simply snaps apart under Israfel’s strength.

The world rushes back in, and Mary opens her eyes to see Grace raining down from Heaven.

She had no idea what it looks like to a human, but with Israfel’s vision it’s breathtaking - a radiant, exultant constellation of blue-white vapor that seems to sing with joy. She can see it as a brilliant, coruscating, sky-spanning cloud of light at the same time as she can see each individual Grace, and for the first time she truly understands what a monstrous thing Metatron’s actions were and why Cas’s theft of Theo’s Grace was such a problem. Each Grace has a _flavor_ to it, a unique harmony that corresponds exactly to a specific angel and then combines to make a glorious, resonant whole. As she looks, Mary can pick out the strands of Rebekah’s compassion, Aaoxaif’s meticulous attention to detail, Hannah’s loyalty, and so many others that her human mind begins to spin.

Metatron hadn’t just taken their power. He’d taken _parts_ of them - integral, irreplaceable aspects that they’ve been patching over with human emotions to try and cope with the loss, to try and still feel like themselves. She can see now why Rebekah had been so insistent on helping her angels right after the depowering, and why Aaoxaif had clashed so badly with Cas sometimes while they were figuring out the cleansing and containment spells. It had been all they could cling to in their confusion.

With a sudden, painful lurch, Metatron’s spell clamps back into place, halting the Graces in their descent. The angels on the battlefield cry out in dismay, staring up at the tantalizing cloud.

**No,** Israfel says, a pronouncement rather than a protest, and reaches for the spell again.

“Israfel, wait,” Mary says. The direct approach is satisfying and often faster, but she’s worried about how much energy Israfel could waste by breaking Metatron’s spell repeatedly if he can just keep using the angel tablet to slap it back into place. Every second that passes grates on her nerves, but she has to keep her head. They have a lot more to do than just re-mojoing the angels.

She resolutely turns her face away from the battle below. She has to trust that Cas and her boys will be able to look out for each other while she fixes this. “Can you get us a look at the angel tablet?”

**Perhaps,** Israfel says, and the next instant Mary’s looking at Heaven again. She watches as Israfel tests the edges of the spell Metatron has blocking entrance into Heaven, and then pushes on a section of it.

They don’t break through completely but Mary’s suddenly able to see a room, decorated to human eyes like an old-fashioned writer’s study but overlaid with a sheen of Heavenly power to Israfel’s. Metatron is standing behind the antique desk shouting instructions to three other angels, who are trying to hold Gadreel back.

A split second after seeing this scene, Mary gets a migraine from it. She can see Metatron and Gadreel and the other three as humans, but she can also see them as… something else. Not angels like she’s been conditioned to expect, with wings and halos and maybe a harp or two, but… _creatures_. She sees wings, sure - _dozens_ of them, connected to bodies too huge and too weirdly shaped to logically fit inside a human vessel, moving in ways that make her brain hurt. Metatron is smaller than the others, with fewer wings and only two faces, and Gadreel’s wings are tattered and bent close, like he’s been contained for so long that he doesn’t remember how to open them fully. 

Her eyes begin to sting fiercely. **My apologies,** Israfel says, and abruptly Mary can only see the angels as human-shaped, albeit marked as different by a slight aura and the faint outline of double wings. Gadreel’s even still look damaged. **You are fragile and must be protected.**

Normally Mary would bristle at that, but her head’s still throbbing and she’s pretty sure that when she returns to it she’s going to find that her body’s got a nosebleed. Maybe some bloody tears, too, because _ow._

“Thanks,” she says, a little shaky. “Can we help Gadreel somehow? Find the tablet for him?”

**He knows where it is,** Israfel says, unhurried, and indeed as Mary watches Gadreel manages to throw off one of his attackers, stab the second, and force the third back through the study door.

Metatron stops yelling and shrinks back against the wall, watching Gadreel narrowly. Gadreel seizes the old-fashioned typewriter from the desk, ready to smash it, and then stops, surprised. Mary feels a _pulse_ of power and the typewriter glows golden for a moment. When the light fades, Gadreel’s wings look healthy and normal.

“Gets your attention, doesn’t it?” Metatron says quietly. “It tastes like forgiveness. Like coming home.”

Gadreel looks like he’s going to cry. Almost involuntarily, he pulls the typewriter in closer to his chest.

“Imagine what you could do with that,” Metatron continues. “Imagine how grateful the others would be to you if you used it. I’ve only told you some of my plans. Imagine what kind of Heaven we could build.”

“ _Serpent,”_ Gadreel chokes, and hurls the typewriter against the wall.

The crack of the tablet breaking seems to cut across Mary’s very being, echoing down to her bones. It even surprises Israfel - their return to the battle below is controlled, but abrupt.

“Good to know Gadreel was sincere,” Mary says, breathless.

**Gadreel is always sincere,** Israfel says, ripping the Grace spell apart again with vicious satisfaction. **Sincerity does not preclude making poor choices.**

“Fair enough,” Mary murmurs, more by habit than because she’s paying attention to the conversation any more. She’s torn between watching the Grace continue its descent down to the waiting angels and searching the crowd for any sign of her boys. It’s complicated now by the fact that every angel has come to a stop, reaching up towards their descending Graces in desperate anticipation. Down below the hunters have formed protective buffer zones around them to keep them safe from attackers while they’re distracted. Even Muriel has stopped crying and straightened up, her eyes riveted on the cloud.

**Here,** Israfel says, and abruptly Dean, Sam, and Cas seem to stand out sharply against the violent background. Sam is with Victor and a group of hunters at the far end of the barricades, and Dean is a few feet away from Cas at the end nearest Mary, trying to push their perimeter out to include her. Dean’s got Jody watching his back, Mary’s surprised to see, although suddenly the number of unfamiliar faces makes more sense. Jody and some of her barricaded town must have agreed to join the fight and come in through Oz with the others.

Cas is doing a better job than most of the angels at keeping an eye on his surroundings, and is still contributing to the defense of the Oz door, but he’s clearly distracted. As the first few returning Graces find their angels, he stops pretending completely and falls back behind the barricades, face tilted up towards the sky.

The first re-mojoed angels raise their voices in jubilant song, and within moments they’re joined by more and more - from in front of the barricades, and from further away as well. She even sees a few strands of Grace touch down in the midst of the attacking army, which makes a horrible kind of sense. Of course depowered angels would have been amongst the people infected by the virus, and of course Abaddon’s demons would have found a particular kind of satisfaction in forcibly possessing former angels. Mary sees more than one of the massed figures suddenly become a battleground of demonic smoke versus glowing Grace.

Muriel begins inching her way up the debris towards Mary until she’s pressed, shivering, up against Mary’s leg. When her Grace arrives, flavored with intellect and timidity, she hunches down protectively instead of reveling in it.

“We’re in so much more danger now,” she says, voice dull with foreboding.

Mary can guess that she’s thinking about the angels who were in charge of punishments and brainwashings, and even if Naomi’s dead Muriel’s not entirely off-base with her apprehension. The Free Will Army has an edge against Abaddon’s forces now and a fighting chance against the virus, but even if she hasn’t been able to focus on it Mary hasn’t forgotten the angelic factions that had caused them so much trouble... and she’s not naive enough to think that some time spent depowered amongst humans will have magically cured the militants of their destructiveness. It’ll be a race now to get a handle on the virus and close Heaven before the more fractious angels have a chance to get their balance and start causing havoc.

“Israfel, can you find Malachi and Bartholomew?” Mary asks. They can’t really spare the time or the power to deal with either of them, but a little information wouldn’t go amiss. She has no real idea what they’ve gone through since being depowered, or how they might react to suddenly being reconnected.

**The angel Bartholomew stands in the crowd,** Israfel says, and Mary can see him highlighted the way Cas and her boys are. He’s a good way back from the front lines, and from the state of his clothing until recently he was one of the infected. **The angel Malachi flies towards us.**

Angelic flight is fast enough that Malachi arrives right about when Israfel finishes speaking. He heads unerringly for Bartholomew, and the two immediately begin trying to kill each other.

“Having them fight each other does keep them out of our hair,” Mary says dryly, “but I can’t help but be a little disappointed in their growth as people.”

**They are angels,** Israfel says, mildly puzzled.

“Never mind,” Mary sighs. The last few bits of Grace are still falling, and she picks out Cas again. He’s still standing behind the barricades looking up, and the tentatively hopeful expression on his face is fading into weary resignation. As she watches, Dean fights his way back through the crowd and finds him, grabbing him by the shoulder to get his attention. Mary can’t hear what they’re saying, but she sees Dean put a sympathetic hand on the back of Cas’s neck and then point him towards where Rebekah and the medics are set up by the safety of the Oz door. Cas shakes his head and squares his shoulders, readying his angel sword for battle again.

“What happens to angels who don’t get their Graces back?” Mary asks, heart aching with sympathy. 

**Every angel has Grace save Castiel,** Israfel says. **I can build one for him.**

“After we deal with the virus,” Mary says. Tactically, it’s a reasonable thing to say - Israfel will probably need all her strength for the virus and closing Heaven, and it’s more important to halt the spread of the contagion and cure the afflicted than it is to give one person a power-up. It doesn’t stop Mary from feeling like a horrible, selfish excuse for a human being, though.

She _will_ find a way to give Cas a choice before Heaven closes. She just… can’t right _now_.

“Do you have any suggestions?” Mary blurts before she can get herself too twisted up worrying about Cas. “Aaoxaif and Gagiel know how to cure it with sigils and Rebekah said she might be able to do it directly if she had enough power, but it’s gotten pretty spread out now and it was really exhausting for them to do it before.”

**All will be well,** Israfel says. **Watch and be still.**

She sings out to the other angels, a lighting-fast burst of information culled from Mary’s memories, and then Mary hears Aaoxaif take over. It goes too fast for Mary’s human brain to process, and the next instant angels begin to take flight.

“Where are they going?” Mary asks, and with a brain-breaking lurch she can suddenly see on the scale that Israfel does - microscopic and infinite at the same time. She can pick out the grains of dust on the ground between Abaddon and Cain as they fight, and she can see entire galaxies at the same time.

Before she can get completely overwhelmed, Israfel’s focus narrows to just the Earth, and Mary can sense angels coming into position around it, like Heavenly satellites looking down. She spots Aaoxaif and Rebekah, and also Gagiel, Hannah, Tpau, Omia, and dozens more whose names she didn’t know until now, linking up to form a web of shining sigils around the planet. To her surprise - and, she would imagine, the other angels’ consternation - Gadreel has joined them as well.

She frowns. “Wait, are they going to heal the _whole Earth?_ All at once? Is that even possible?”

**We will heal the whole Earth,** Israfel corrects, and begins to sing.

Such an insane plan wouldn’t be possible without Israfel, Mary figures that right away. The other angels are providing power, certainly, but they’re mostly there to serve as conduits. When they’d done this spell in McClave, it had looked from Mary’s perspective like a blinding flash of light, after which the infected person began to heal at an accelerated rate.

This is very different. Even besides the fact that Mary’s seeing it through an angel’s eyes instead of her own, the power build up is much more gradual and the _color_ of the spell is different. In McClave everything had been bright white - a sort of Grace-ish color, actually, if there can be such a thing.

With Israfel behind it the sigils glow a warm gold, increasing gradually in intensity until they’re so bright that Mary can no longer make out the individual lines making up the symbols. The massive effort Israfel is putting into the endeavor is a constant pressure at the edge of her awareness, but Mary’s so absorbed in watching the spell grow that she doesn’t have any attention to spare for worrying about it. She can see Aaoxaif, her eyes narrowed in intense concentration as she focuses on the world below, nearly invisible behind the brightness of Israfel’s power. Rebekah, on the other side, has her eyes closed and looks completely peaceful. She’s even smiling slightly, and Mary wonders what it feels like to have power like Israfel’s flowing through you - incomprehensibly vast, and as old as Creation. She wonders if the angels forming the spell can taste the difference. From the way Hannah is crying, she thinks they probably can.

The golden light is a solid force now, encompassing the Earth completely. Israfel musters her strength, and the world fades out into one blinding pulse of power.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When Mary wakes up she’s lying on her back on the pile of rubble and she can vaguely hear battle sounds in the background. Her mind feels fuzzy and muddled, but she’s pretty sure the noise is a lot more confused than it was the last time she heard it.

Muriel is next to her. She’s staring woodenly off into the distance but her fingers are digging into Mary’s arm.

“Ow,” Mary croaks. Muriel flinches slightly but doesn’t let up.

It feels awfully lonely in her head, now that she’s a little more conscious. Mary frowns and pokes at the part of her mind that had Israfel in it the last time she’d checked. For a moment there’s nothing and Mary thinks Israfel is gone completely, but before she can panic she hears a faint, exhausted **I remain. A moment, please.**

Mary pushes herself up on her elbows, groaning. Every inch of her hurts, like she’d actually fallen from her vantage point when the spell went live instead of being psychically kicked back into her body, and the sigils Cas left on her are barely glowing. She thinks she can still see them altering themselves a little bit, but they’d done that before Israfel had arrived anyway.

The battle is still raging below, complicated by the fact that the formerly infected parts of Abaddon’s army are now fully human and generally extremely confused. From her vantage point, Mary can see a steadily increasing number of people just turning and running away, towards the open fields or towards the road in the hopes of being picked up. Given the blow Abaddon’s army has just suffered, Mary would bet there are some demons among them as well taking the opportunity to jump ship.

Up by the barricades the more dedicated demons are still fighting, and in the confusion the hunters are sorting out friend from foe by reaching out and simply yanking people across the demon wards. If they cross, they’re human, and if they’re not, they’re demons - can’t beat that for practicality.

Whatever Israfel had done to make it easy for Mary to pick out Cas and the boys has worn off, at least temporarily, but Sam’s a head taller than everyone he’s standing near which makes him fairly easy to spot. Dean and Cas she can’t see, although she picks out Missouri crouched down by a group of angels who are slumped over and semi-conscious after Israfel’s spell. Mary’s glad to see that they got back okay, even if there does seem to be a carefully delineated no-man’s-land between Gadreel and everyone else.

“Her! It’s her! Get _her!”_

_Dammit_. Abaddon and Cain had been keeping each other so nicely occupied that Mary had completely forgotten to watch out for them. Abaddon’s scream of rage brings two things to Mary’s attention: that she’s still cut off from the bulk of the hunter army, and that along with her ability to find her boys in a crowd her shimmering bubble of protection has vanished as well. She staggers to her feet. 

“Muriel, can you ward us?” 

Muriel gives a half-hysterical little laugh. “From what, the demons? The angels? The hunters? They can tell we’re a threat now. Wards might delay them, but it’ll only be worse in the end.”

“Then get up and help me shift some of this crap,” Mary snaps. Muriel left Mary’s sword and gun just far enough down the fallen piece of wall they’re perched on to be out of reach, and there’s already one demon starting to climb up towards them. It will only take a few seconds for her to be joined by others and then the party will really start. “Can you fly us down behind the barricades?”

“Dying here will be faster and less unpleasant than dying there,” Muriel says, refusing to move. 

Well. Mary supposes that passive fatalism is at least better than active revenge for Mary having taken a wrecking ball to her plans, but given the current circumstances, not by much. There’s nowhere to really retreat to from this point, but there is a broken section of catwalk that is further back and kind of steady. Mary forces Muriel to her feet and shoves her back onto it. As long as Muriel doesn’t decide to knife her in the back at least Mary’s only got herself to worry about protecting now.

More demons have arrived at the bottom of the wall, and Mary is officially out of time. She yanks out a section of plywood and corrugated metal, which is the only movable thing within her reach, and sends it careening down. It only knocks over one demon, but it buys her a precious second to free the piece of rebar that had been wedged underneath.

The first demon is unarmed and easy prey - Mary ducks under his arm and kicks him in the stomach, knocking him back into one of his companions. A second demon tries to grab her by the braid and winds up with a broken jaw for his troubles, but the third is smart enough to hang back and try to shoot her instead. Mary dives for cover, swearing, and spares a second to hope that Muriel doesn’t catch a stray bullet. 

The dive nearly takes her too far and for an instant she thinks she’s going to fall off the wall and onto the rubble below, but although she loses the rebar she regains her balance just in time. She rolls back over and hurls a broken piece of cement at the armed demon, hitting her in the head, but it’s given the others enough time to crowd close. Mary kicks one in the knee and another in the crotch, but her back is well and truly against the wall now. 

“Israfel!”

Power surges up within her - a weak shadow of the strength Israfel had had before, but it’s enough to knock the nearest demon off her feet. Mary tries to scramble upright but the rubble shifts underneath her and she winds up half-crouched and too off-balance to avoid the next demon’s blow, which hits her high on the side of the head and sends her sprawling. Israfel tries again, but she simply doesn’t have the strength. Her second burst of power barely pushes the demon back by half a step.

Mary rolls onto her back, ready to kick the next demon who gets close enough. The demon reaching towards her suddenly stiffens and screams, vomiting up black smoke. Mary ducks and covers instinctively as the abandoned vessel topples over, unconscious. Another two screams alert her to the fates of her other attackers.

“Mom! Mom, are you all right?”

Mary uncurls immediately and sits up, nearly bumping heads with Dean. He takes one look at her face and flinches badly.

Right. She’d forgotten about the tattoo-sigils. And the nosebleed. She can’t even imagine how unsettling she must look right now, particularly given their past experiences with angelic possession.

“Israfel?” Dean asks, expression stony. He has a nice bruise rising on one cheekbone, but looks to be otherwise unharmed. Sam and Cas, standing warily behind, look to be in a similar state, although Cas is smiling at her instead of looking creeped out.

“Worn out after the healing thing,” Mary says, “so it’s just me for right now. How did you do that exorcism? I didn’t hear any chanting.”

Sam waggles one hand at her. It’s covered in black sharpie. “Cas figured it out.”

His smile isn’t quite solid, but he’s doing a better job at keeping his feelings off his face than Dean is. Dean reaches out to help her up, snatches his hands back like he’s been burned, and then stands up and manhandles Cas instead, rummaging through Cas’s pockets until he comes up with Cas’s handkerchief. To Mary’s amusement, he then spits on it and kneels back down to clean the blood off her face.

Mary catches Sam’s eye over Dean’s shoulder and has to work hard to suppress a laugh at his incredulous expression. “Dean, sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m going to need to take a shower after all of this anyway.”

“Right.” Dean backs off, looking embarrassed, and covers it by saying “You okay in there?” in a gruff voice.

“Think I’ll have a respectable headache afterwards, but we’re coexisting pretty well,” Mary says, shrugging. 

Sam takes a hesitant step closer. “You really… the stuff Cas did, it worked?”

Well, more or less. If Israfel hadn’t been a reasonable kind of being, everything might have gone very differently. “It really did, kiddo. I’m sorry, I know this is hard on both of you.”

Sam gives her a strained smile. “Just another apocalypse, Mom.” 

Dean is looking anywhere but at her. “Cas, how’s it look out there?”

There’s a thump and another scream, and Cas reappears over Dean’s shoulder. “Fine.”

Dean rolls his eyes, his expression settling a little bit. “‘Fine’. Hell does that mean, ‘fine’?”

“It means ‘fine’,” Cas says, unperturbed. “I believe Cain will land a killing blow at any moment.”

“That I want to see,” Mary says, scrambling to her feet. 

Down below, the stream of figures fleeing the battle has increased. The humans lucky enough to have been close to the barricades are starting to clue into the presence of people who seem to know what’s going on and are willing to help, and have crossed the wards by the  
Oz door in increasing numbers. The rest are heading in any direction they can, leaving a handful of demons behind. Mary’s not sure whether the remaining demons still think Abaddon has a chance, or if they’re just really keen on killing a bunch of humans, but they’re continuing to stand their ground. She scans the crowd carefully, looking for Bartholomew and Malachi, but they both seem to have vanished.

The battle between Cain and Abaddon is still going strong, though, and they stand out clearly from the crowd not only for the ferocity of their fighting but for the way no one will go near them. Cain’s indefinable aura of menace is enough to keep even hysterical and panicking humans well clear, and the dead bodies of several demons on the ground are enough to warn away anyone Abaddon might try to call in for backup. Remembering how thoroughly Cain took care of his demon attackers in Missouri, Mary is not at all surprised that it was impossible to overwhelm him through sheer numbers. She’s actually pretty impressed that Abaddon’s held out for as long as she has.

She’s definitely faltering now, though. As Mary watches Cain manages to land a hit on her arm, forcing her to drop her knife. She scrambles back, ducking away from Cain’s follow-up, and somehow manages to dive under his arm and roll to her feet about a yard away. She runs a few more steps and throws her head back. 

Thick demonic smoke begins to pour out of her mouth, but before she can abandon her vessel completely Cain slams his knife into her back.

She seems to light up from the inside, face frozen in a silent scream, and then the half-expelled smoke flares up and vanishes. Abaddon slumps to the ground, dead.

Nobody says a thing. It’s a moment of victory, but everyone seems frozen - the demons in horror, the humans in surprise. Cain himself seems stuck, staring down at Abaddon’s body as if he hadn’t entirely intended to do it.

Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d hoped that Abaddon would kill him, instead. Mary hasn’t forgotten the weariness in Cain’s voice when he’d told her and Dean that the attacking demons wouldn’t kill him in Missouri.

“Any idea which way Cain’s going to swing now that his business is done?” Dean asks quietly. “Do we have any kind of plan for dealing with him?”

Mary glances over at the Oz door. Gadreel has vanished.

“Wait for it.”

In the few minutes it takes for Gadreel to return, the remaining demons either cut and run or smoke out. Cain is still standing, shoulders slumped and his knife held limply in one hand, and doesn’t react when Gadreel drops a bruised and bloody Metatron in front of the Oz door barricades for the other angels to deal with.

He reacts to Gadreel’s second companion, though. Mary’s too far away to hear the exact words, but he takes a half-step back, surprise and fear all over his face, and throws away his knife. It’s hard to say if he’s disarming himself because he’s ashamed or because he’s worried he’ll hurt Abel again, but Mary would bet it’s the latter.

“Who’s that?” Sam asks, frowning.

“Abel.”

They turn to stare at her. “How did you arrange for _that?”_ Dean says, equal parts incredulous and admiring.

Mary steels herself. “Gadreel,” she says, pointing.

Their jaws drop. “I… don’t actually know what to feel about this,” Sam says finally. 

“Do you think it will work?” Dean asks.

Mary exchanges a glance with Cas. “Well, it’s possible,” Cas offers. “Cain initially took the Mark and the Blade to save his brother from the same fate, and past evidence would suggest that such a bond is strong enough to overcome even God’s will.”

He gives Sam and Dean a fond look as he says this last part, and they both cough and look away, embarrassed.

“Just the right thing to do,” Sam mumbles.

“So!” Dean says loudly. “Not really the Bible authorized version of the story, huh?”

“No, I suppose not,” Cas says, surprised, as if the thought has just occurred to him.

“What’s he doing now?” Mary asks, squinting down at the little tableau. Abel is holding out one hand to Cain, who is shaking his head and backing away.

“Abel’s forgiving him,” Sam says.

“Then why is Cain attempting to leave?” Cas wonders.

“Because Abel’s forgiving him,” Dean says grimly.

Cas winces. Mary tucks an arm around each of her boys, pulling them in close, and then wiggles her fingers in Cas’s direction until he notices and takes her hand, squeezing it gratefully. 

They watch silently as Abel speaks to Cain, still holding out his hand, and Cain finally takes a hesitant step forward. They watch as Cain steps in again, right past Abel’s outstretched arm, and hugs him.

There’s a startled pause, and then Abel hugs Cain back, and the two of them dissolve into light and vanish, leaving Gadreel alone.

“Where do you think they went?” Sam whispers.

No one answers. Mary doesn’t really want to know, anyway. She feels oddly close to tears.

“So now what?” Dean asks. His tone is brisk, but he’s still leaning up against her. 

“Wait for Israfel to get her strength back,” Mary says, shrugging, “and then close Heaven. And then... I dunno. A barbecue?”

“I’ve never been to a barbecue,” Cas volunteers.

“Barbecue it is, then,” Dean says. Cas nods, shoulders hunching slightly, and Mary remembers with a guilty pang that she still needs to negotiate the angels returning to Heaven with Israfel.

She pokes at the Israfel corner of her mind, and gets a faint but slightly exasperated **A moment, I said. You are no longer in immediate danger,** in return.

Okay. She’ll just, she’ll just sort that out later. Yeah.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It takes about forty-five minutes for Israfel to get enough of her strength back to consider attempting to close Heaven. Mary spends it sitting on a patch of grass with her back against a convenient chunk of concrete, just watching everything happen. Dean, Sam, and Cas keep her company. They’d each made their own kind of half-hearted gesture towards going to help out with the cleanup and been gently but firmly rebuffed (well, for the most part it had been gentle. Jody had laughed in Sam’s face and told him to sit down before he fell down). Ostensibly they’re guarding Metatron, who’s sitting a few feet away trussed up and very, very thoroughly gagged. Rebekah had taken one look at him and declared him to be a secondary problem, to be set aside and dealt with after everything else. From the venomous look on Metatron’s face, he hadn’t appreciated the comment very much.

Bit by bit, they’re joined by others. Charlie wanders over looking tired but satisfied and curls up on the ground with her head in Sam’s lap, poking him until he arranges himself to suit her. Her eyes are firmly shut by the time Dorothy comes over to donate her jacket as a blanket, muttering in exasperation about idiots who think sleep is for the weak. Garth and Jo meander up a few minutes later, arguing heatedly about something Mary doesn’t understand and strongly suspects is fictional, if Charlie’s occasional mumbled interjections are anything to go by.

Ellen comes over and flops down next to Dean, who is flat on his back to Mary’s right and conveniently close enough that Mary can reach over from time to time and stroke his hair. 

“Too many cooks in that kitchen. Figured I’d come hang at the kids’ table.”

Mary smiles, watching the bustle. “Where did Linda even find a folding table?”

“All Jim Murphy,” Ellen says, grinning. “That man has organized way too many church socials, by the look of it.”

Mary laughs a little. In amongst the humans, of course, are the angels. The ones who have recovered from Israfel’s spell are moving amongst the humans, tending to the wounded and occasionally leaving to fly someone back home or gather some supplies. Rebekah is directing the healer angels, so Aaoxaif is marshalling the others with a clipboard and a ferocious expression.

Mary _likes_ the angels - the Free Will Army ones, anyway. She knows, intellectually, that as a whole the angels have mostly just caused a lot of havoc on Earth. She knows they’re responsible for a lot of horrible things - done to each other and done to humanity as a whole. They’d orchestrated a significant portion of Mary’s own life, which she may never finish untangling in her head. She understands why closing Heaven is a good idea - to protect humanity and, hopefully, to give the angels a chance to sort themselves out.

She’s still going to miss some of them. They’ve made for unexpectedly good allies and turned out to be actually quite interesting people.

**I am ready.**

Mary sighs and gets up, going over to Charlie. “Sweetheart, can you wake up for a sec?”

Charlie binks up at her blearily. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Mary says crouching down. Sam’s watching her curiously, and she gives him a reassuring smile. “Can you check something for me?”

Charlie nods and rolls over onto her back, unearthing her tablet. “What do you need?”

“Have there been any angel battle reports since they powered up?”

Sam tenses immediately. Charlie frowns and pokes at her device for a moment, sitting up fully. “Yeah,” she says tiredly. “Looks like a blowup outside of Madisonville, in Eastern Kentucky.”

“Malachi’s headquarters,” Mary remembers. “Figures.”

“Don’t they ever stop?” Sam says plaintively.

“Don’t worry about it, kiddo,” Mary says. “I’ll take care of it. You guys want some juice?”

She doesn’t even know if they _have_ juice. It just sort of pops out of her mouth. It’s possible she needs a nap of some kind.

Sam and Charlie blink at her, completely thrown and successfully distracted, so Mary decides to call it a success anyway.

“Um. No, thank you,” Charlie says.

“All right.” She tugs Dorothy’s jacket up from where it had slipped down after Charlie sat up. “Get some rest.” She stands up, smoothing Sam’s hair down as she walks behind him. He turns to watch her go, frowning a little, but he doesn’t say anything.

Aaoxaif is surrounded by a gaggle of angels, so Mary goes up to Rebekah instead. “Hey, do you have a minute?”

“Of course.” Rebekah straightens and follows Mary a few steps away. “What do you need?”

Mary bites her lip. She doesn’t feel right about slamming the doors of Heaven without warning the angels who have helped them, but she’s not actually sure how they’ll react. Rebekah tends to be very calm about nearly everything, but it’s hard to put ‘even though you’ve helped us we kind of want you gone’ in a _nice_ way.

“So,” Mary says slowly. “There’s a plan in the works that we haven’t really told you about yet.”

Rebekah regards her calmly. “I can think of a few possibilities,” she says. “My first guess would be that you wish to close Heaven the way you closed Hell.”

Right. It’s probably not that hard to figure out. “Yeah,” Mary says, shamefaced.

Rebekah nods. “You should. Is a sacrifice required, or does the Burning One have the authority?”

“The - Israfel can do it,” Mary says. “Look, Rebekah, you guys should have a choice about this.”

“Heaven is home,” Rebekah says, shrugging. “Most angels returned as soon as it was opened to them. We have remained because we wish to help.”

**Truth,** Israfel says in Mary’s mind, and for an instant she can hear the angels’ song again. It’s a homecoming song, relieved and joyous.

“Malachi and Bartholomew are still down here,” Mary says, shaking off the feeling the song gives her. With the bunker blown up, they don’t have a home any more. Even the warehouse is in ruins, and for a moment she’s so overwhelmed with longing for the old house in Lawrence that she gets a lump in her throat. “They’re fighting. They’ll keep fighting in Heaven too, I think.”

“Very well.” Rebekah looks awfully calm about it.

“They can do a lot of damage,” Mary reminds her. “And they probably won’t be happy with you for siding with us.”

“They certainly will not,” Rebekah says, sounding a little amused. “Mary, I appreciate your concern, but it is not your responsibility to protect us. It was ours to protect you, and we failed. We must relearn how to be ourselves before we can be trusted around others. This is a just solution.”

“We’re friends, of course it’s my responsibility to protect you,” Mary says.

“Nevertheless,” Rebekah says, smiling. “It has been an honor, Mary. We will keep a place for you and your children.”

“Thank you,” Mary says. “Hey, Rebekah?”

Rebekah turns back. “Yes?”

“Gadreel was a big help,” Mary says. “Just, if he ends up with you. Give him a chance?”

“We will,” Rebekah promises. “Now do your duty.”

Mary nods and turns back towards the warehouse. The others are still sprawled on the ground at the edge of the field, and no one’s really looking in her direction. She feels like she should warn them that she’s about to close Heaven, but at the same time she doesn’t want to disturb them. They look content, there - Dean’s even laughing at something that Ellen has said. She can’t actually remember the last time she saw Dean laugh. 

“Do I need to be up on the rubble again for this?” she asks.

**That would help,** Israfel says. **Gadreel will go to Heaven.**

“Sorry?” Mary says, thrown. She starts to climb up the rubble, moving quietly to avoid drawing attention.

**You implied that Gadreel might not return to Heaven. He will. He is an angel.**

“Right.” Mary stops climbing and sits down, perched halfway up the fallen section of wall. “Look, the angels should have a choice. About whether they return or stay here as humans.”

**Angels are angels,** Israfel says, uncomprehending. **Angels belong in Heaven.**

“Okay,” Mary says slowly, “but what if some of them liked being human? What if they want to stay?”

**Angels are angels,** Israfel repeats.

“So they _have_ to return to Heaven? Even if it scares them, like Muriel?”

Israfel is silent for a moment, and then Mary’s body continues to climb towards the top. Israfel hasn’t used Mary’s body like this since the first few moments when she arrived, and it’s deeply unsettling. She rebells instinctively.

**Hush,** Israfel tells her. **All will be well.**

They reach the top. Muriel is still sitting on the broken piece of catwalk where Mary had left her during the fight. She has her arms wrapped around her knees, as if she’s trying to make herself as unnoticeable as possible.

**Small one,** Israfel says. **You do not wish for Heaven.**

Muriel shakes her head, wide-eyed. “It’s dangerous there,” she whispers.

Israfel nods, and extends a tendril of power in Muriel’s direction. In an eyeblink Mary sees Muriel’s existence - her fear, her desperation, the endless centuries trapped in Heaven with no one to help her. 

**Peace, then,** Israfel says, and before Mary can protest a stream of blue-white light flashes from Muriel to Israfel, and Muriel’s body collapses.

“ _What did you do?_ Mary demands.

**Be still,** Israfel says. **She will rest with me until the Father returns. None will harm her. None will disturb her.**

“Oh,” Mary says, subsiding a little. That… actually does sound like what Muriel wants. Minus the ‘destroying existence’ part, anyway.

Israfel sits them down next to the I-beam where Mary had summoned her. **I will return Castiel’s Grace and then close Heaven.**

“Cas gets a choice,” Mary says immediately. “I know what you said, that angels are angels. But Cas created himself, right? That means he gets a choice. He’s different.”

Israfel sighs, as close to exasperated as an unfathomably old creator of existence can probably get. **Your reasoning is sound,** she says grudgingly. **I will summon him.**

Down below, Mary can see Cas suddenly stiffen. He doesn’t give anything away, though - he gets up slowly and stretches, then wanders casually back in the direction of the rubble. Dean glances up briefly, and then goes back to his talk with Ellen. No one else seems to notice.

Cas makes the climb swiftly and comes to a stop by Mary. She beckons to him. “Sit down for a sec, kiddo. I want to talk to you.”

He sits down, looking wary. “Is Israfel unable to close Heaven?”

“She can do it,” Mary says. “And she can restore your Grace and send you back too if you want, but you have to choose now.”

Cas pales. “Choose?”

“Human or angel, Cas,” Mary says as gently as possible. “I know it’s not fair to give you so little time to consider.”

Cas bites his lip. He starts to turn his head, to look down at Dean and Sam and the angels, but Mary reaches out and stops him with a hand on his cheek.

“Close your eyes, Cas. Don’t think about us, don’t think about the angels. Don’t think about duty or usefulness or anything else. Just think of yourself. Throw everything else out. What do _you_ want? Who do _you_ want to be?”

“Human,” Cas whispers. “I want to be human. I want to stay here.”

Mary nearly cries with relief. She settles for grinning like a crazy person. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” He opens his eyes. “I want to try barbecue. And road trips. I want to - I want to watch silly TV shows and be able to cry when something sad happens. I want to watch bees.”

“Okay,” Mary says, beaming at him. “That sounds pretty good, Cas.”

She leans forward and kisses him on the forehead. Israfel’s power floods through her and into Cas, and for a split second they’re locked together. She can feel his compassion, his curiosity, his confusion at the world and his love of the people he’s found, and then the connection breaks and he slumps against her, unconscious.

“Is he okay?” Mary asks, reeling, even though with Israfel’s vision she can see that he’s fine. Better than fine, actually - the ugly scars Metatron had left behind when he stole Cas’s Grace are gone, and the lingering shadow of Theo’s poison has vanished. There’s no negative space where Cas’s wings should be. He’s just… human.

And kind of heavy. She shifts until he’s leaning up against her side, head on her shoulder, and mostly supported by the I-beam behind them.

**He is well,** Israfel says. **He will live a long human life. Unless he does something stupid.**

Mary laughs. “Definitely human, then. Okay. Let’s close Heaven.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Maybe it’s because closing Heaven takes a lot of power, and maybe it’s because of Israfel’s departure, but afterwards Mary never entirely remembers how it happened. She remembers Israfel’s power building, and the vague awareness of angels traveling upwards from Earth. She remembers the warm rush of song as every angel is finally home again.

She remembers a ghostly touch against her forehead and a feeling of approval and farewell, and then she’s opening her eyes to see a frantic Dean and a desperately curious Sam coming towards them.

“Are you okay?” Dean demands. “Is Cas okay?” He throws himself down beside them, checking them both over.

“We’re fine,” Mary says, smiling. “He chose us. He chose to stay human.”

“Well _yeah_ , angels are douchebags,” Dean says, compulsively checking Cas’s pulse.

“Heaven’s really closed?” Sam says, crouching down to check on her. 

“Yeah.” Mary tilts against him. She feels worn out, but in a good way. “We did it. We really did it. It’s over.”

“Holy shit,” Sam says, and has to sit down. “Heaven and Hell are both closed. I can’t… I almost can’t believe it.”

“Still a lot to do,” Dean says, pushing back Cas’s eyelid to check his pupil. Cas groans and stirs sluggishly, batting Dean’s hand away and going back to sleep. Dean frowns. “Still some demons loose. And we need to find somewhere to stay tonight.”

Sam sighs at his brother’s disregard for The Moment, but it doesn’t bother Mary much. 

“I know a house near here. It needs a little TLC, but it’ll do. Everything else we’ll figure out.” She grins at them. “We’re good at that.”

Dean smiles reluctantly. “Okay. Yeah, we kick ass.”

“Well, family business,” Sam says. “Plus Cas, of course.”

“Cas is family,” Dean and Mary say at the same time.

“I know, that’s what I _meant,”_ Sam huffs. 

It’s an almost sickeningly perfect moment. They might be sitting on rubble at the edge of a battlefield, but they’re all okay and there’s no new fight in the offering and everything is, bizarrely, turning out as planned. It’s not the kind of thing their family usually gets to have.

There’s a thump behind them. “Oh, boy,” Muriel’s former vessel says, sitting up and looking around in confusion. “This is _not_ the National Park.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY CRAP ALL THAT’S LEFT IS THE EPILOGUE. 
> 
> In celebration, have a bit of behind-the-scenes trivia! This is a screenshot of what I’ve been doing to keep all the locations in this story straight. You obviously can’t see it in a static picture, but each pin has a description attached with the place name, relevance to the plot, and what chapters it’s featured in. The green one is the bunker, since for most of the story that’s home base.
> 
> I tried to make this so that clicking on the picture would bring up a bigger version, but I don't think it worked. Suffice it to say that there are a lot more locations on this map than it might look like at this size - there are a bunch that are just really close together. The final count came to 28 separate locations.
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/capedcrusader92/media/HailMaryMapLg_zpsc3f4d065.jpg.html)  
> 
> 
> Also, I fell down a Photoshop rabbit hole and accidentally made fanart of my own story. [Whoops?](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/post/95868908715/so-then-i-tripped-and-made-fanart-of-my-own-story)


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNINGS: Fluff. Just, so much fluff. You could make a really comfy mattress out of this epilogue is what I’m saying.  
> SPOILERS: 4x18 ‘The Monster at the End of This Book’  
> THINGS RESEARCHED: Weird roadside attractions in America, South Dakotan regional delicacies, escape attempts from Alcatraz  
> NEW TAGS: Tag removed: Work In Progress (!!)  
> NOTES: Holy crap you guys it’s the epilogue!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

**EPILOGUE: TWO YEARS LATER**

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mary’s upstairs putting fresh sheets on Sam’s bed when she hears him pull into the driveway and shout a hello to Dean. She rushes the end of the job, leaving the quilt folded on the end of the bed instead of spread out like it should be, but even so he’s finished talking to his brother and come inside by the time she makes it downstairs.

She heads straight for the kitchen. Sure enough, he’s already head-and-shoulders into the refrigerator. _Kids._

“Eat anything marked ‘pie ingredients’ and you’ll have your brother to deal with,” Mary warns him. She’d be surprised if Sam managed to get anything out of the refrigerator without an avalanche, anyway - Mary emerged victorious from the annual who-gets-to-host-Thanksgiving grudge match this year, and in preparation she’s laid in enough supplies to feed an army. The Free Will Army, to be exact.

Sam laughs and straightens up. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, baby.” Mary grins and pulls him into a hug. He looks good - a little tired, which is reasonable considering he’s just finished his midterms, but there’s a sparkle in his eyes that she likes. “How was the drive?”

“You spend your life on road trips, a couple of hours is nothing,” he says cheerfully. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it home over the summer.”

“Well, I missed you terribly, but it helped that you called every other day to let me know how the internship was going,” Mary says gravely. Most of the Free Will Army had segued directly into cleanup and rebuilding efforts after the last battle, but Linda Tran had immediately sat Kevin and Sam down at the kitchen table and refused to let them leave until they’d finished at least two college applications each. Kevin has gone into something complicated with computers, largely because it’s the farthest he could possibly get from anything prophet-related, but Sam had spent a semester back in pre-law before giving up and switching to folklore and mythology. The change had pretty much only been a surprise to him.

Sam blushes. “Was every other day too much?”

“No!” Mary says quickly. “I loved every bit of it.”

“It was _way_ too much,” Dean says, letting the storm door bang shut behind him. Mary does an automatic check as Dean reaches for the handle of the refrigerator: he’s sweaty and covered in sawdust and engine oil, but his hands are clean. She’s learned to pick her battles. “Dude, you were like a preschooler at your first sleepover.”

“Like you didn’t text me constantly to make sure I hadn’t run across any cursed objects or evil prophecies,” Sam shoots back. “Jerk.”

“Gotta watch out for my widdle baby brother out there in the big scary world,” Dean sing-songs, snagging a carton of orange juice from the door of the refrigerator. “Bitch.”

“Language,” Mary reminds them, although she doesn’t really mind it. Sam and Dean have had to do a lot of tentative renegotiation of their relationship - started, of course, by the mess with Gadreel, but not particularly helped by the fact that the last time Sam had gone to college it had involved the death of his girlfriend and a years-long estrangement from Dean. Mary’s spent more than a few late nights being a sounding board for both of her kids on the subject, so even if it involves swearing she’s glad to see them being so easy with each other. “Dean, use a glass.”

“It tastes better from the carton,” Dean says sadly, complying. “You checked out Cas’s collection yet?”

“It’s grown?” Sam says, straightening up. “And I noticed the new skylight. Tracy Bell and Rufus do that?”

“A few weeks ago,” Mary confirms. When she’d guided their battle-weary party to the half-burnt abandoned farmhouse she’d sheltered in with Cas after being resurrected, she’d anticipated having to do some repairs if they wound up staying there for more than a few days. She had not anticipated that it would turn into a hunter-wide community project which gets expanded further every time someone comes to stay for a few weeks or Dean gets bored. 

She probably should have, though. Most hunters are functionally itinerant and this is the closest a lot of them will get to a permanent home until they retire. And hunters being hunters, which is to say completely paranoid and chronically independent, this rather scattershot approach to home repair has led to some slightly unpredictable results. Not only is the house warded against everything alive and a few things that have probably been extinct for centuries, there are also two second floors that don’t connect to each other and the living room spent nearly two weeks being solely accessible through the porch window because Garth accidentally drywalled over the door and then nobody had time to fix it. 

“You should definitely check out the house later,” Dean says, draining his glass. “Collection first. What was up last time you were here?”

Sam flushes slightly. “Uh. Mom had just framed my acceptance letter.”

Mary regrets nothing. Dean cackles. “A banner day for geeks everywhere. Come on.”

Sam looks a little apprehensive, but he follows Dean down the hall willingly enough. Dean pushes the door open and gestures grandly. 

“Wow,” Sam says, goggling. “This has _definitely_ expanded.”

Ostensibly, this is Mary’s office, and she does still use it for that. More and more, though, it’s becoming a showcase for the things people (mostly Cas) bring her from their travels when they come to stay: souvenirs, pictures, the occasional small magical item.

Cas being Cas, of course, some of the souvenirs have a tendency to be a little… unique. She has a keychain from the National Archives and a bumper sticker from Mount Washington, which are fairly normal, but there’s also a brick on her windowsill from New Orleans, an empty unlabeled wine bottle from Oaxaca, and one corner of her desk is taken up by a tiny pile of carefully curated pebbles from Nova Scotia.

In amongst everything else, there are photographs. Jo had told Cas that people on road trips were supposed to take pictures in front of important monuments, and he had taken it to heart.

“Is he doing the _Star Trek_ hand thing in _all_ of them?” Sam asks, goggling at a picture of Cas standing stonefaced in front of the World’s Largest Fake Lobster with one hand raised in a Vulcan salute. (He’d brought her a snow globe. It’s on her bureau.)

“Totally Jo’s fault,” Mary says, although she has to admit she’s never dissuaded him from the practice. There are more than a few pictures on the wall from trips she’s taken with him in which they’re both doing it.

“He’s such a nerd,” Dean says affectionately. “When did he say he was arriving?”

“Before dinner, as long as the car doesn’t break down,” Mary says, absently checking her phone. No new texts, so everything’s probably fine. When Cas had decided to see the world the first thing she’d implemented was the Text Me If There’s Trouble rule, and after a few discussions about Mary’s personal definition of ‘trouble’ when it’s used in conjunction with ‘Cas’ he’s been very conscientious about it.

“Oh, _God,”_ Dean groans. “Did he say what he’s driving? No, you know what, don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss.”

“You let Charlie dress him up and take him to ComiCon?” Sam says, pointing incredulously at a framed picture of the two of them piled together into some big chair made out of swords that Mary personally thinks looks kind of tacky. And uncomfortable.

“You know what she’s like,” Dean says, mostly managing to not look shifty. “Mom, I’m going to go take another whack at fixing the motor in your blender, okay?”

“Sure, kiddo,” Mary says. She knows he’s probably just hoping to get out to the shed before Sam sees the picture of _him_ at ComiCon. He’d sworn all of them to secrecy before he’d agreed to go, but Mary refuses to give up the photographic evidence. It’s too precious.

“Hey, it’s us from when Cas came to campus!” Sam says, noticing a new picture. “That was a fun trip. I don’t think Doctor Geissler’s going to forget it any time soon.”

Mary winces. From everything Sam has said the archaeology department head deserved what he’d gotten, but it had probably still been unfair to let Cas at him. It was like using the OED to squash a mosquito.

Sam pauses by a picture of all of them standing in front of the rebuilt Roadhouse at last year’s Thanksgiving. It had been the first time since the battle that the world had been settled enough for any kind of celebration, and a lot of the people in the picture look run down and exhausted. Closing Heaven and Hell had thrown everything into upheaval - not only amongst humans, who had been suddenly confronted with a number of drastic and widespread unexplained phenomena, but amongst supernatural creatures as well. In the picture Sam’s looking at there are at least ten people with visible - albeit healing - injuries, and Victor and Linda had had to call in from where they were masterminding the rebuilding efforts in Boston. Dean’s being half held up by Sam because he’d been concussed during a fight with a particularly nasty poltergeist and got woozy when he wasn’t flat on his back.

“He’s doing okay, right?” Sam asks, glancing in the direction of the shed.

“He’s sorting himself out,” Mary says. Sam and Dean have been good about keeping in touch, but they’re also both far too practiced at downplaying their hurts. She’s not surprised that Sam’s taking the opportunity to pump her for information. “There’s a lot to get used to but he’ll be okay, sweetheart.”

Sam fingers the edge of the picture of Cas and Jo in Riverside. “Sometimes I think about how everything is now - how _hunting_ is now - and I just have to laugh at how much it’s changed.”

It’s actually _closer_ to the community that Mary had known as a child than it is to what she’d found when she was resurrected, but she knows what he means. One of the unexpected side effects of the events two years ago has been a steep rise in novice hunters. Between the reality-warping angel-demon battles, the virus, and the extremely noticeable pyrotechnics of closing Heaven, the concept of the supernatural has become a lot harder for people to ignore. There are still plenty of new hunters who are getting into it after losing a loved one to something unexplainable, but there are also a surprising number of people who are either curious or feel morally obligated to do something to help now that they’re aware of the danger.

At the beginning of the summer Dean had gone with Ellen and Jo on a hunt in West Virginia and they’d spent more time running into and hastily mentoring newbie hunters than they had on the actual hunt. The newbies hadn’t been entirely useless, either - Dean had said that one was ex-military and another was a trained paramedic, and that once they’d been brought up to speed they were pretty competent.

The next two hunts he’d gone on had been much the same, and they’ve been hearing similar reports from other veteran hunters. They haven’t confirmed it in so many words, but Mary’s pretty sure that Tamara and Isaac are seriously considering setting up some kind of hunter training school. She _knows_ that Victor and Jody are starting up an inter-agency law enforcement task force to deal with those individuals who have figured out what’s going on and responded opportunistically rather than altruistically.

“In the past we haven’t really had luck with going normal,” Sam says, shoulders hunched.

Mary frowns. “Are you having trouble at school, sweetheart? I know Linda’s pretty adamant, but if it’s not for you then you shouldn’t feel like you have to do it.”

“No, it’s not that,” Sam says. “I really like what I’m doing. It’s just kind of surreal sometimes, you know? And I worry about Dean. He’s had more trouble with it than I have, in the past.”

Mary nods. “The last few times he’s tried to go on a hunt he’s been beaten to it by other hunters, which threw him a little. I think he’s at the point right now where he’s starting to realise that he _could_ quit, if he wants to.”

“Do you think he wants to?” Sam asks.

Mary shrugs. “Not sure yet. He’s done a lot of work on the house lately and he seems to enjoy that.” She smiles a little. In a bit of exceptionally good timing Cas had shown up a few months ago, just when Dean was looking particularly lost, driving a car in such a state of disrepair that it had rendered Dean momentarily speechless. He’d been remarkably patient during Dean’s entire rant about automobile safety and the extensive lessons in car maintenance that followed it, too. “I think he’s been eyeing the mechanic’s place in town, too. They posted a ‘help wanted’ sign about a week ago.”

Sam nods, looking relieved. “He’s always enjoyed the car stuff. Good at it, too - Bobby wouldn’t even let me near half of his tools, but Dean was always out there messing around.” He gives Mary a sidelong look. “The extra income probably wouldn’t hurt, either.”

Mary rolls her eyes at him. “I told you, we’re fine. Believe it or not, this place isn’t just a Bed and Breakfast on paper, I do actually wind up with guests sometimes.” Occasionally they aren’t even hunters, which can be an adventure. “The stuff I do in town is a help too.” Probably most helpful, though, is the mysterious deposit that appears in her bank account every month from ‘FWA Inc’. Questioning Charlie, the most likely culprit, has only led to incredibly un-innocent giggling and a faintly worrying reference to a comic book character Mary isn’t familiar with.

“Mom,” Sam says, leaning up against Mary’s bookshelf and giving her a level look, “how are _you_ doing? I mean, you’re a hunter too. Are you okay with all of this? Putting it all aside and just running this place?”

“That’s not all I do,” Mary points out, unoffended. It’s sweet that Sam worries, even if it’s unnecessary.

“Yeah, but teaching self-defense classes and going on the occasional hunt, it’s not exactly - what I mean is, you’re not keeping this place up just for us, are you?” He fidgets, nervous. “You have a better track record than any of us at going normal for a while, but… there were sort of extenuating circumstances last time.”

Mary snorts. “I guess a bunch of angels mucking around in your personal life does count as ‘extenuating circumstances’, but no, sweetheart. I do actually really enjoy doing this. The more domestic stuff.” Discovering that still held true had been more of a relief than she’d been expecting, frankly. At least the angels hadn’t muddled her up _quite_ that badly.

She pushes off from the doorframe. “We should bring your stuff up to your room. Do you need to do any laundry?”

Sam laughs a little as he straightens up. “No, I’m fine. I’ll grab my gear.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Cas does indeed arrive before dinner. Sam’s helping Mary in the kitchen when she hears the tell-tale sound of an engine in desperate need of help - possibly in the form of a bullet - turning up the driveway. She immediately shushes Sam and turns off the stove so they can clearly hear what’s going on outside.

They hear Cas’s car door open and shut, and Dean’s steps on the porch as he comes around the corner. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, voice as gravelly as ever. There’s a pause. “Are you all right?”

“A fucking _Pinto?!”_ Dean howls, outraged, and Mary and Sam dissolve into stifled laughter.

“Tell me the truth,” Sam gasps over the background noise of Dean’s impassioned diatribe on the failures of the automotive industry and Cas’s lack of common sense when it comes to anything except apocalyptic trans-dimensional warfare. “You two planned this, right?”

“You can’t prove anything,” Mary giggles, wiping her eyes. “Oh, gosh, that felt good.”

Outside, Dean winds down - or possibly just has to pause for breath - and Cas says in a slightly offended tone, “I don’t see why you’re so upset. I put gas in it this time.”

The back door opens while Dean’s still sputtering indignantly in the driveway. Cas edges in, breaking into a smile when he spots Sam.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Hey, Cas,” Sam says, opening his arms for a hug.

Mary waits patiently until they’re done and then captures Cas herself. “I’m sorry you keep getting yelled at for this plan,” she murmurs into his ear.

“That’s all right.” He gives her a sly sideways look. “Ironically, I’ve had to learn quite a bit about automobiles in order to find ones that run poorly but will get me as far as your house.”

Mary laughs and kisses him on the forehead. “Are you thirsty? Dinner’s almost ready.”

“I’m fine, thank you. I brought you something.”

The ‘something’ turns out to be a laminated map of San Francisco - one of the touristy ones with little cartoons marking places of particular importance. Mary dutifully exclaims over it and then pins it up on the refrigerator, and when she slips out of the door to get Dean for dinner Cas and Sam are deep in a discussion about the history of San Francisco and whether or not the 1962 escape attempt from Alcatraz could only have been successful with supernatural aid.

Dean is still by Cas’s car, but the hood is up now and the area around it is littered with tools. Dean’s legs are poking out from under the engine block, so Mary sits down with her back to the car and tugs on his pant leg until he scootches back out.

“How’s it look?”

Dean shakes his head. He’s still on his back, so the motion mostly just gets even more dirt in his hair and Mary makes a mental note to dust him off before she lets him into the kitchen. “Like spare parts. I could probably get it running if I basically rebuilt most of it, but Cas is the only idiot who would ever want to drive it. I’m just going to find him another car. Salvage this for scraps.”

Mary nods, putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder. It’s more for her own comfort than his - even now that things have calmed down so much, she hasn’t gotten over how nice it is to have her kids safe and nearby. “You like this stuff, huh?”

“Yeah. It was always my favorite part of visiting Bobby when we were kids. Usually some of the best times I had with Dad, too.” He sits up and puts his back against the car, his shoulder against hers. “Hey, Mom?”

“Yes?”

He picks at a spot on the knee of his jeans. “I’ve been thinking, maybe I could help out more here if I got a job. Just something part time, so I can still hunt in between. We don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Do you have one in mind?” Mary asks, watching his body language carefully. He seems more uneasy than such a straightforward proposal would warrant.

“I think the mechanic in town is hiring.”

Mary nods. “If it’s something you want to do then I think it’s a great idea, sweetie. But if you’re just doing it because you feel like you should, I’d rather you didn’t. I’m managing just fine as it is.” She squeezes his knee. “And I never, ever want you to feel like you owe me something for being here, okay? This is your home, just like it’s mine and Sam’s and Cas’s.”

He darts her a quick look and a half smile before turning his attention back to the fraying spot on his pants. “I know, Mom.”

That’s not it, then. “If you wanted to, you could work there full time and put the hunting on a shelf for a while, too,” she tries.

Bingo. His shoulders hunch. “Maybe.”

“Sort of itches in the back of your head, doesn’t it?” Mary says conversationally. “Like there’s something you’re supposed to be doing.” She smiles at his surprised look. “I left hunting behind once too, kiddo. I remember how it feels. It’s not something you can just turn off one day, even if you need to. It takes a while.”

Dean nods, looking away, and Mary takes pity on him. She’s given him enough to think about for the moment. “Well, we can talk about it more later if you like. Dinner should be ready now and I bet we lingered just long enough to get out of setting the table.”

Dean gives a soft huff of laughter and helps her to her feet. “Sneaky, Mom. Very sneaky.”

They’re most of the way to the kitchen door when Dean twitches and pulls out his cell phone. “Charlie says she wants to Skype us asap,” he says frowning down at the little screen. A half-second later Sam sticks his head through the door.

“Charlie just - oh, you got it too.”

Dean’s frown deepens. “It must be important if she texted us both. Mom, is your laptop set up in the office?”

Dinner forgotten, all four of them crowd into the office and gather around the laptop. Charlie’s face appears in short order - she’s in her apartment and looks to be unharmed, which is reassuring. She’s also fighting back a smile, which is even more so.

“Dude, don’t scare us like that!” Sam snaps once he sees she’s all right.

“Sorry,” Charlie says. She doesn’t look terribly contrite, and in the background Mary sees Dorothy wander by, notice who’s on Charlie’s screen, and quickly duck out of sight snickering. “I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to update you on this one.”

“Okay,” Dean says, drawing the word out.

Charlie wiggles on the couch and then contains herself. “So, you know how I try to keep an eye on how people are reacting to stuff about us? See what information or disinformation is out there?”

“Sure,” Sam says cautiously. Mary knows it’s been quite a job, too, because Charlie often shares the more ridiculous theories with her. There are a _lot_ of them.

“I’ve also been keeping an eye on how supernatural stuff shows up in pop culture and the media, and I’ve got wind of something I think you guys will be interested in.” In the background Mary hears Dorothy let out a bark of laughter. Sam and Dean trade foreboding looks. Cas starts to smile faintly.

“All right, let us have it,” Sam says wearily.

Charlie’s practically bouncing now. “Our capitalist society being what it is, it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to profit off of the general interest in the unexplainable. And since we’re a pretty media-focused culture obviously one of the biggest returns for the corporate buck would be to take that interest mainstream.”

“Charlie!” Dean interrupts. “Recap that for an audience that doesn’t have an internet degree in social theory?”

Charlie rolls her eyes. “Somebody had the bright idea to make a supernaturally-themed TV show.” She grins. “And somebody else went looking for existing source material and stumbled across a certain series of books written by a Prophet of the Lord.”

“ _No,”_ Sam says desperately.

Charlie cackles. “Oh yes! It’s been greenlit, budgeted, and cast. They start shooting this fall. The showrunner’s some lady named Becky Rosen, she seems super enthusiastic. She’s been all over the message boards.”

Sam buries his face in his hands. 

“But you can shut it down, right?” Dean says plaintively. “You can, you can give them a million viruses or something and shut it all down?”

Charlie giggles. “Oh my God, your _faces!_ No, Dean, I can’t actually control the world with my computer, but I love that you think I can.”

“What’s the show going to be called?” Cas asks. Sam and Dean give him betrayed looks.

“Well, the book series is titled _Supernatural_ , but they’ve decided to scrap that, and if you think there wasn’t a big hullabaloo about it then you’ve never spent much time on the internet. Eventually they settled on _The Winchester Gospels.”_

“Well, I think this is a great idea,” Mary says, and then fails to disintegrate under her childrens’ glares. “You said those books were pretty accurate, didn’t you? Then if Charlie’s right about the popularity of it all it will be a good way to distribute accurate information. Just think how many people could be saved if they only knew to keep salt and iron on hand.”

Sam wavers. Dean sets his head down on the desk and moans.

“I bet anti-possession tattoos will get a lot more popular, too,” Charlie offers. “Even with Hell closed there are still a few demons running around.”

There certainly are. In fact, about six months ago somebody arranged for an apple tree sapling to be delivered to Mary’s house. There wasn’t any message attached, but Mary would bet anything that it was from Bela. She knows that it’s probably her responsibility as a hunter to try to track Bela down, but she kind of likes the idea of her being free in the world, even if she is a demon.

“There’s going to be fan fiction,” Dean says, his voice muffled against the desk. “And conventions. And _cosplay.”_

“Don’t forget the fanart,” Charlie says gleefully. Dean reaches over without looking and closes the laptop on her.

“I did tell you that they would come to be known as _The Winchester Gospels,”_ Cas says.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

_Mary had wondered about the side effects of hosting Israfel. Not necessarily during the leadup to saying yes, and while she was hosting Israfel her thoughts were mostly occupied with needing to stay alive and not be utterly overwhelmed by the vastness of Israfel’s being, but once it became clear that she would actually survive the experience it did cross her mind._

_The tattoos were the most obvious consequence, and although they’ve retreated somewhat and faded significantly they’re still there. Only visible if you know what to look for or if Mary takes her shirt off while she’s winter-pale, but there. They still move around a little, too._

_Her current situation had been a side effect that she hadn’t considered, although she’s come to appreciate it._

_“Hello, Aaoxaif,” Mary says. Tonight they’re sitting in the bunker’s old library, which is about as imaginative as Aaoxaif tends to get when she visits Mary’s dreams. On the few occasions he’s visited Gadreel usually chooses somewhere with stunning scenery, and once Tpau showed up with the bridge of the_ Enterprise _, but generally the only angel Mary sees is Aaoxaif._

 _(Well. And then there are some nights where the universe spreads beneath her and all she can feel is_ safe _and_ peace _and she thinks Israfel might be letting her eavesdrop on Muriel’s dreams, but those are very rare.)_

_“Hello, Mary. A happy festival day to you.”_

_“Thank you,” Mary says gravely. Tonight Aaoxaif has shown up with a clipboard and a stack of file folders, which probably means she’s in the middle of something. “How’s the state of Heaven?”_

_Aaoxaif sighs, exasperated. “About as one would imagine. Our de-militarization efforts are becoming more accepted, but there are still some hardliners who tend towards unthinking violence. And there is of course the problem that most angels simply don’t know what to do without orders. Your suggestion to ask the souls in Heaven for their help was a very good one, by the way. Many of them are very sensible and have been of great help.”_

_“Oh, I’m glad that’s worked out,” Mary says. Every time she talks to Aaoxaif she’s tempted to ask about people she knows - is Deanna there? Is John? What about her father, or her kids’ friend Bobby? - but she always backs out at the last moment. Either Aaoxaif won’t have seen them, which means they’re… somewhere else, or she will have and Mary still won’t be able to talk to them. Maybe it’s cowardly, but she doesn’t think she’s ever going to ask._

_Something buzzes in Aaoxaif’s pocket. She pulls out a cell phone and scowls at it._ ”Idjits _. I apologize, Mary, I must go.”_

_“That’s fine, Aaoxaif,” Mary says, smiling. “I’ll see you later.”_

__

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jody arrives the next morning with a limp, a teenaged girl she rescued from a vampire gang, and two pans of her mother’s famous kuchen. Charlie and Dorothy show up a few hours later crammed into the back bench seat of Ellen’s truck with Jo, and spend most of their time getting underfoot in the kitchen and breaking into helpless laughter every time they see Sam or Dean. By late afternoon the house is packed and Rufus is in the backyard with Pastor Jim and Kevin making ominous observations about how what the property really needs is a fallout shelter, but most of the prep work for Thanksgiving dinner is done and Mary has only had to intervene once to prevent her kitchen assistants from staging a mock knife fight.

It’s hectic and chaotic and Missouri has been spiking the tea since three PM, but as she watches Annie Hawkins and Roy get into a name-calling fight over the best way to pitch the overflow tents Mary can’t help but feel content. 

Cas comes over to lean against the porch railing next to her, and for a moment they stand silently and watch as Annie and Tracy Bell gang up on Roy and banish him to the bonfire-building crew so they can finish up in peace. The night’s entertainment will involve ‘smores and more drinking than is strictly healthy, which will in turn keep most of the crowd out of the way and nursing hangovers tomorrow while the cooking is happening.

“How’s humanity today, Cas?” Mary asks.

Cas hums thoughtfully. “Very curious about shoo-fly pie,” he says finally. “Isaac insists that it’s good, but I can’t help but be dubious about the name.”

“Not unreasonable,” Mary agrees. “I’ve had it before, though, and it is pretty good. You can have a bite of mine tomorrow if you want to test drive it first.”

“Thank you,” Cas says, and falls silent.

Mary watches him for a moment. “Something on your mind, kiddo?”

Cas shakes his head. “Not particularly. I’m just… feeling grateful for a moment.”

Mary smiles and leans up against him. His shifts his feet slightly so he can lean back. “You’re still okay with trading the universe for humanity?”

Cas gives her a surprised look. “Humanity is still the universe, Mary, it’s just on a smaller scale.” He takes a breath, thinking, and then says “As an angel, I could fly and heal others and travel was very simple. And I do miss some of those things. But now - travel should be slow, Mary. You should have to see what you’re passing through, the good and the bad. Before, I could heal, but it was rare for me to use it off the battlefield because I never saw anything else. I liked humanity, but I still thought you were… ephemeral. Fleeting. To be able to walk this earth, to pass amongst humanity and experience it - it’s a gift, and I treasure it.”

Mary stares at him. Cas shifts uncomfortably. “What?”

“Nothing.” She gives him a sideways hug. “You just make me proud to be human sometimes.”

Cas coughs, embarrassed. “Did you know that in the early days of aviation they built a network of giant concrete arrows across America to guide pilots from one coast to the other?”

“I didn’t know that,” Mary says, leaning her head against his shoulder. “If they’re still there we should go find them sometime.”

He relaxes a fraction. “All right.”

Mary’s never believed in happy endings - not because she doesn’t buy into the ‘happy’ part of the phrase, but because the ‘endings’ part seems disingenuous. Life keeps going, after all, even after you kill the giant and rescue Prince Charming.

As she stands there next to Cas and watches Dean and Sam bicker over how much lighter fluid is ‘too much’ for a seven foot high bonfire, though, she has to admit that this makes for a pretty damn good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the Longest Author Notes Ever!
> 
> First off, the chapter-specific stuff: There is in fact a World’s Largest Lobster, and it’s in New Brunswick, Canada. The comic book character Charlie alludes to is Oracle (aka Barbara Gordon), who at one point in _Birds of Prey_ was funding her superheroing activities by withdrawing a ‘sin tax’ from the bank accounts of criminals and mobsters. The concrete arrows Cas talks about really exist, and there’s a good write-up of them [here](http://sometimes-interesting.com/2013/12/04/concrete-arrows-and-the-u-s-airmail-beacon-system) which includes a list of where the remaining ones are located.
> 
> Secondly but most importantly, **a massive thank you to everybody who has been following this story!** Whether you commented or kudosed or lurked, knowing you guys were reading this was the only thing that got some of these chapters written. I’ve never written a WIP before, and if you all hadn’t been the nicest, most patient readers ever, this could have been a very different experience. I don’t know if I have it in me to write _another_ 190k-word epic, but if I ever even consider doing it again it will all be because of you.
> 
> I also want to give an extra-special shout-out to the handful of readers who have been following along and commenting since the beginning. I was sure that eventually you’d get bored or just not feel like commenting any more (which would have been fine!), but you kept coming back! And commenting! I know it’s technically a small amount of interaction when set against the vast scope of human experience, but I really feel like I got to know some of you during the course of this, and that’s a wonderful feeling. So: thank you for being you, and for being awesome. :) 
> 
> (And for giving me some great ideas with your comments! I will forever be bitter that I didn’t figure out the Jessica Moore thing in time to use it in the story. DAMMIT.)
> 
> Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that with this final chapter I also turned this story into the first part of a series. I don’t have concrete sequel/prequel/interquel plans at the moment, but I have been writing this story more or less non-stop for more than ten months (!) and I’m anticipating going through some form of withdrawal when all my free time isn’t occupied by idly pondering What Would Mary Do. Since it’s now part of a series, and if you’re still interested in this ‘verse, you can subscribe to the series and be notified about anything I may add to it.
> 
> Following directly up on that: if there’s anything you wanted to see more of, any character POVs or missing scenes you didn’t get - or, hell, any AU scenarios or pairings you secretly wanted, [prompt me](http://galaxystew.tumblr.com/ask)! I’ll make a multi-chapter ‘answering prompts’ story and write them. (Well, time permitting and within reason. You’d have to make an extremely persuasive argument for me to do anything with non- or dub-con, and frankly I’m not sure such an argument exists.)
> 
> My final order of business is this: I didn’t start writing this story with this kind of thing in mind, but the more I wrote of Mary and her boys the more I started realising what an awesome mom I have. She might not know the first thing about killing monsters or exorcising demons, and experience has shown that she should _never_ be handed a loaded firearm, but I got most of Mary’s caring mannerisms from her and if she ever thought I was in trouble she would absolutely try to break down a door to get to me. There’s more than one way to be a badass mom, and mine is.
> 
> So, retroactively: Mom, I dedicate this story to you.
> 
> Okay, I think that’s everything. Thanks again to all of you. :D
> 
> P.S. Dean totally dressed up as Doctor Sexy for ComiCon.
> 
> P. P. S. In the second season they film an episode of _The Winchester Gospels_ at the bed and breakfast and fans of the show unexpectedly latch on to it as an important Fandom Destination, leading to a series of misadventures when fans wind up cohabitating with hunters. 
> 
> Also, as the business owner Mary is given a bunch of show merchandise and thinks it’s hilarious to wear it around Sam and Dean.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hey, no hurting my friend.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1508969) by [Bluesy (Poots)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poots/pseuds/Bluesy)
  * [Bad dreams (screaming nightmares)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782544) by [Bluesy (Poots)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poots/pseuds/Bluesy)




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